The present invention relates to a system architecture and processing method with multi-beam and micro-beamforming, and especially refers to: a fine delay with a single beamforming for delay focusing and signal summation, combined with multi-line coarse delay beam focusing technology for delay time compensation and correction.
Previously related to the multi-beamformer of the present invention, for example, the ultrasonic transducer probe with a micro-beamformer used for multi-line imaging in the US2015/02971.83A1/CN104903741B patent, in this patent, such as the architecture in
The problem to be solved by the present invention is that in order to improve the frame rate of image scanning, the system design mostly adopts the multi-beam imaging method. Therefore, it is necessary to add several sets of micro-beamformers, to achieve parallel processing of multi-line imaging. Although the frame rate can be increased as a result, it also increases the complexity of the hardware relatively, making it difficult to achieve miniaturization of the hardware.
The present invention means to solve the technical problem of the system is to propose for each parameter an optimum engagement range, and to propose the most suitable parameter combination through the ultrasonic system, and use the micro-beamforming architecture to the delay of the multi-channel that the circuit is disassembled into a fine delay circuit and a coarse delay circuit, through multi-stage input signal delay and summation, the signal data volume and hardware complexity at the probe end can be effectively reduced, meet the needs of system miniaturization, and avoid large beamforming errors or high calculations outside the combination of parameters the amount. On the other hand, to increase the frame rate of image scanning, this system design mostly adopts multi-beam imaging. The idea is to combine multi-beam and micro-beamforming system architecture is optimized for complexity.
There is no need to use multiple sets of micro-beamformers, only a single micro-beamformer is needed to achieve the fine delay of beamforming. Delay operation combined with multi-line coarse delay beamforming operation to meet the requirements of multi-beam imaging, and in response to this architecture, fine delay and coarse delay is compensated and corrected to maintain the accuracy required for the multi-line beam focusing on the delay time of each channel.
The effect of the present invention compared with the prior art is to increase the frame rate of image scanning. When the system design adopts the multi-beam imaging method, there is no need to add several sets of micro-beamformer, only by adjusting the common fine delay and assigning the delay time setting the value of the coarse delay of each scan line, you can make the equivalent delay focus time of each scan line very it is close to the ideal beam focusing delay time, which can be effectively applied to ultrasonic scanners.
According to the present invention, an optimal micro-beamforming architectures of a multi-beamformer system is detailed as follows.
Micro-beamforming is to perform multi-channel signal delay and summation operations at different scanning depths to achieve the purpose of focusing imaging. Its architecture is shown in
Coarse delay is held between the common channel group, and the fine delay for the channel group delay time difference of each channel, which can be expressed as follows:
CoarseDelay(k)<min {BeamformDelay(n)|channel n inside channel group k}
FineDelay(n)=BeamformDelay(n)-CoarseDelay(k)
Where k is the group number, n is the channel number, and BeamFormDelay(n) is the ideal beam focus delay time.
Refer to the simple calculation example in
In addition, in order to increase the frame rate of scanned images, multi-line imaging is generally used for beam focusing processing. The method is to perform beam focusing processing of multiple scan lines at the same time after a single beam is launched. Therefore, the different processing methods such as single beam, dual beam, and quad beam as shown in the example in
The dual beam focus of the delay profile is illustrated in the example shown in
In the system architecture, two sets of fine delay and coarse delay focus delay calculations need to be performed simultaneously. Under the quad beam architecture, the system needs to perform four sets of fine delay and coarse delay focus delay processing at the same time.
In order to optimize the complexity of system implementation and achieve a miniaturized design, single fine delay beamforming (10) and multi-line coarse delay beamforming (20) can be used to achieve. In the present invention, the delay focusing and signal summation of fine delay using single beamforming are combined with the compensation and correction of the delay time in the multi-line coarse delay beam focusing. The architecture is shown in
The fine delay beam focusing using a single beam reduces the complexity of the multi-line beamforming system architecture, but in order to reduce the overall beamforming focus delay error, the calculation method of the fine delay beam delay time of the common single beam is as follows:
CommonFineDelay(n)=mean{FineDelayBeam_1(n),
FineDelayBeam_2(n), FineDelayBeam_x(n)}
Among these Beam_x is the x-th beam, and CommonFineDelay(n) is the beam delay time of the fine delay of a common single beam .
Among them, the common single beam fine delay beam delay time calculation method can also use the linear or non-linear function calculation f(⋅) of the fine delay of each beam, and meet the following:
CommonFineDelay(n)=f(FineDelayBeam_1(n),
FineDelayBeam_2(n), FineDelayBeam_ x(n)),
where min (FineDelayBeam_1(n), FineDelayBeam_2(n), . . . , FineDelayBeam_x(n))≤f(⋅)≤max (FineDelayBeam_1(n), FineDelayBeam_2(n), . . . , FineDelayBeam_x(n));
Among these, Beam_x is the x-th beam, and CommonFineDelay(n) is the beam delay time of the fine delay of a common single beam.
Shown in the example of
The focus delay time of the coarse delay of each scan line is compensated and corrected by referring to the common fine delay in the following way:
The CompensatedCoarseDelayBeam_x(k) is the beam delay time of the compensated and corrected coarse delay.
Adjusting the common fine delay and the delay time setting value of the coarse delay assigned to each scan line according to the above method, then can make the equivalent delayed focus time of each scan line very close to the ideal beam focus delay time, as shown in
Shown in
The above only expresses the embodiments of the present invention, but does not limit the scope of the patent of the present invention. For those of ordinary skill in the art, several modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. And any improvements all belong to the protection scope of the present invention.