A handheld ultrasound device may comprise components configured to provide decreased size, weight, complexity, and power consumption. The handheld ultrasound device may comprise a beamformer configured to implement and compress a flag table in place of a delay table. These improvements can decrease the amount of memory used to generate ultrasound images, which can decrease the size, weight, and power consumption of the handheld ultrasound device. Ultrasound image data on a handheld imaging probe can be compressed on the handheld imaging probe prior to transmission from the probe in order to decrease the amount of data transmitted from the probe. The compressed data may comprise compressed pixels to maintain spatial image resolution. The compression circuitry may comprise an amount of memory related to a dynamic range of the compressed data that is independent of the dynamic range of the input data, which can decrease memory, power consumption, and latencies.

Ultrasound imaging system, devices, and methods for minimizing grating lobe artefacts in an ultrasound image are provided. For example, an ultrasound imaging system can include an array of acoustic elements and a processor in communication with the array. The processor controls the array to activate a plurality of apertures and subapertures in a scan sequence, generate an image comprising a plurality of pixels, identify at least one subaperture of the plurality of subapertures corresponding to a reduced signal value for one or more pixels of the image, and generate a grating-lobe-minimized image based on the identified subapertures. The grating-lobe-minimized image can be output to a display or combined with the original ultrasound image to include image features lost or reduced in the grating-lobe-minimized image. The grating-lobe-minimized image advantageously reduces image artefacts and clutter to simplify ultrasound image analysis and diagnosis procedures.

The disclosure provides for a method for generating an ultrasound image that includes transmitting, by a plurality of transmitters in a transducer, at least two transmit beams at different angles, where at least parts of the transmit beams cover an overlapping region, and receiving, by a plurality of sensors of the transducer, reflected signals of the transmit beams. The method further comprises calculating channel coherence for the received signals to produce one or more channel coherence images, and calculating transmit coherence for the received signals to produce one or more transmit coherence images. The information from at least one of the channel coherence images and at least one of the transmit coherence images are combined to identify moving objects. The received signals from different transmits in overlapping regions are then processed to produce a final image that is compensated for the moving objects.

The present disclosure discloses an ultrasonic imaging method. The ultrasonic imaging method may include: obtaining emitting instructions for emitting a plurality of ultrasonic waves, gaining instructions, receiving instructions, and idle instructions relating to the plurality of ultrasonic waves, and storing the emitting instructions, the receiving instructions, the gaining instructions, and the idle instructions in a ring buffer; obtaining the emitting instructions from the ring buffer, and emitting the plurality of ultrasonic waves based on the emitting instructions; obtaining a gaining instruction and a receiving instruction corresponding to each emission of the plurality of ultrasonic waves from the ring buffer, and obtaining at least one enhanced echo signal based on the gaining instructions and the receiving instructions; and obtaining the idle instructions from the ring buffer, and processing the at least one enhanced echo signal based on the idle instructions to obtain a target ultrasonic image.

A hand-held ultrasound device, for placement on a subject, includes a semiconductor device and a housing to support the semiconductor device. The semiconductor device includes: a plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements; a plurality of pulsers coupled to the plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements; a plurality of waveform generators configured to drive the plurality of pulsers; receive processing circuitry configured to process ultrasound signals received by the plurality of ultrasonic transducer elements; and a plurality of independently controllable registers configured to store a plurality of different parameters for the waveform generators.

A digital transmit beamformer for an ultrasound system has a waveform sample memory which stores sequences of samples of different pulse transmit waveforms of differing pulse widths. The memory is shared by a plurality of transmit channels, each of which can access its own selected sample sequence, independent of the selections by other channels. Waveform sample readout by the channels occurs substantially simultaneously during a transmit event, producing a transmit beam from a transmit aperture with different pulse waveforms applied to different elements of the transmit aperture. Higher energy waveforms with wider pulse widths are applied to central elements of the aperture and lower energy waveforms with narrower pulse widths are applied to lateral elements of the aperture to produce an apodized transmit beam.

Techniques, systems, and devices are disclosed for ultrasound diagnostics using spread spectrum, coherent, frequency- and/or phase-coded waveforms. In one aspect, a method includes synthesizing individual orthogonal coded waveforms to form a composite waveform for transmission toward a biological material of interest, in which the synthesized individual orthogonal coded waveforms correspond to distinct frequency bands and include one or both of frequency-coded or phase-coded waveforms; transmitting a composite acoustic waveform toward the biological material of interest, where the transmitting includes transducing the individual orthogonal coded waveforms into corresponding acoustic waveforms to form the composite acoustic waveform; receiving acoustic waveforms returned from at least part of the biological material of interest corresponding to at least some of the transmitted acoustic waveforms that form the composite acoustic waveform; and processing the received returned acoustic waveforms to produce an image of at least part of the biological material of interest.

A method for using an interactive visual guidance tool for an imaging acquisition and display configured for user navigation with respect to a blockage of a field of view detects, and spatially defines, the blockage. It also integrates, with the image for joint visualization, an indicium that visually represents the definition. The indicium is moved dynamically according to movement, relative to the blockage, of the field of view. The indicium can be shaped like a line segment, or two indicia can be joined in a “V” shape to frame a region of non-blockage. The defining may be based on determining whether ultrasound beams in respective directions are blocked.

A method that includes transmitting coded waveforms simultaneously on multiple elements for several frames, constructing a first multi-input, single output (MISO) system from the codes to model transmit-receive paths, solving system and RF data observation by linear model theory, giving an IR set for the medium, and applying the estimates to a secondary MISO system, constructed by analogy to the first, but with pulses convenient for beamforming in the form of a focused set of single-cycle pulses for ideal focused reconstruction.

Systems and methods for medical imaging, specifically ultrasound imaging capable of achieving spatial resolutions that can resolve point objects smaller than 100 μm irrespective of them to be well-resolved, using the principles of compressive sensing and sparse recovery are described. Ultrasound system uses the transmit transducers sequentially to sonicate the medium and the data is acquired over the receive transducers. The acquired signals are then sampled by the low-dimensional acquisition system. The signals are recovered using an optimization method before a frequency domain beamforming technique is applied. The time reversal focused frequency matrix is formed to focus the energy of different frequency bands into a single frequency. Next, a super-resolution synthetic time reversal Phase Coherent MUltiple SIgnal Classification (PC-MUSIC) method is applied to focus spatially on the target locations considering the frequency dependent phase response of the transducers and the green's function of the ROI at the focused frequency.