Using Heterogeneous Hardware for Simultaneous Diagnostic and Therapeutic Ultrasound

Within the Ultrasound Array Research Platform (UARP) open research system project, imaging and high-intensity focussed ultrasound (HIFU) implementations are used independently for diagnostic and therapeutic research respectively. In this paper, the hardware of each system remains unmodified, but the timing and control subsystems present on both implementations are used to control the discrete imaging and therapy systems in a precisely synchronised manner.Also presented is software interface that has been developed to allow any number of UARP systems to be used as one unified platform. The simple syntax of the software interface eases development of user code that controls ultrasound experiments, whilst preserving the individual capabilities of each the systems and leaving advanced control parameters exposed for complex use cases.The techniques discussed in this paper will enable future research into the development of advanced multi-mode sequencing techniques.