Ultrasonic imaging research platform with GPU based software focusing

We have designed and implemented an ultrasonic imaging research platform that performs all signal processing, including beamforming and image processing, using software on a GPU. An operating software is developed on a PC that can control RF data acquisition hardware to accommodate ultrasound images of various formats. Beamforming methods that include conventional scan line based imaging, scan line-based two-way dynamic focusing imaging, plane wave imaging, synthetic plane wave imaging, defocused transmission imaging, multi-beam scan line imaging, and color Doppler imaging are implemented by CUDA which runs on a GPU. Depending on the transmit and receive mode, a variety of experimental data acquisition conditions and various filter parameters can be changed in real time by a graphical user interface, and the RF data can be stored in a hard disk without a limit on the number of frames. Since the software for operation and signal processing can be flexibly changed, the developed system is a very useful research platform for ultrasound image acquisitions. We have used a GeForce GTX 980 (NVIDIA) desktop graphics card with a clock frequency of 1.126 GHz and 4 GB memory and a PC with an Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3-GHz CPU and a system memory of 16 GB under 64-bit Windows 7 along with an analog front-end capable of transmitting 128 channels and receiving 64 channels, obtaining images using a 5-MHz, 128-channel linear array probe.