Rama Pailoor and Dev Pradhan
Texas Instruments

Ultrasound imaging is a non-invasive real-time imaging tool that is finding increased usage in hospitals and clinics. Ultrasound technology uses high frequency sound waves to reflect off changes in acoustic impedances between tissues in the body and constructs an image based upon computer's interpretation of waves' reflections.

This application report provides a high level description of the signal/image processing functional blocks in a typical portable ultrasound system. Examples of system architectures and execution benchmarks of key processing functions are given to demonstrate how the driving requirements of portable ultrasound imaging systems could be met with the use of TI DSPs and system-on-chip (SoC) devices.