RF Data to Medical B-mode Ultrasound Image Toolbox

Abstract

Real-time ultrasonic imaging systems have been available for more than sixty years and are becoming an important tool in the practice of modem medicine. During this time much has occurred to the basic architecture and functions of these clinical systems and their beam-formers, which are the most important components of them. The thesis was focused on develop a new tool in MATLAB which should assist students in understanding the necessary processing steps to convert digital ultrasound radio frequency data to brightness modulation images. The tool will provide the user with a framework for the processing pipeline, it also provides the user with the ability to test signal processing methodologies for digital beam-forming which include: receive focusing, the apodization technique and its effect to reduce the side-lobes, the analytical envelope detection using digital finite impulse response (FIR) Hilbert transformer and how to compress the dynamic range to achieve the desired dynamic range for display (8 bits). Here the image was reconstructed using physical array elements for linear and phase array probe. A compact educational software digital ultrasound imaging system that has almost all its processing steps done on the personal computer (PC) side using MATLAB program will be presented by this study. Correct data obtained from the Biomedical Ultrasound Laboratory, University of Michigan will be used in this project; the phantom data set that will be used to generate the results here is under "Acusonl7".