Zone-based B-mode imaging

A zone-based technique for real-time B-mode imaging is described. The technique utilizes a broad transmit beam from which many receive beams are formed, such that a full field of view image can be formed using only 5-15 firings. On receive, the RF data is pre-processed and accumulated in a channel domain baseband I/Q memory, and then transferred to a DSP-based imaging system, which performs dynamic receive focusing, detection, log compression, spatial filtering, and scan conversion. This technique and architecture extracts more information from each transmit firing, transforming the image formation rate problem from one of acoustic propagation time limitations, to processing speed limitations and thus, leverages Moore's Law. The basic technique and architecture will be discussed, as well as providing several example images from different applications.