FPGA Design for Multiline Acquisition and Ethernet Interface in High-Frame-Rate Ultrasound Machines

ABSTRACT

The study presents the design of a 32-channel field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) for ultrasound instruments working at high frame rates of the order of 1000 fps. The FPGA does multiline acquisition and Ethernet framing of the received data stream from the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The study also presents implementation of innovative methods of moving window algorithm, critical window capture, and envelope detection in the FPGA, for data rate reduction to aid video processing in laptops. The FPGA has serial peripheral interfacing bus interface towards microcontroller. FPGA also has data interface towards ADCs and Gigabit Ethernet MAC device. The microcontroller has in-line management interface with Gigabit Ethernet MAC through the FPGA. The FPGA dataflow consists of received signal processing of captured ultrasound data from ADCs, temporary storage in FPGA, and forwarding to external Ethernet devices after Ethernet framing. All the functional blocks are integrated and synchronized with an external clock. Internal clock and control signal generation modules generate the requisite timing clocks. The FPGA design has been realized in prototype hardware. The prototype hardware has microcontroller-based control from a MATLAB-based graphical user interface for device configurations and image processing. The captured packets as well as the acquired image results are shown. The design is modular, flexible, have large-scale integration, cost-effective, and can be easily replicated.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethernet interface
• FPGA
• High-frame-rate ultrasound
• Microcontroller
• Moving window algorithm
• Multiline acquisition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for supporting this work.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology

Notes on contributors

J. Jean Rossario Raj

J. Jean Rossario Raj is currently doing her research in the Center for Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her areas of research are biomedical signal processing, ultrasound imaging, and biomedical Instrumentation.

E-mail: [email protected]

S.M.K. Rahman

S. M. K. Rahman is an assistant professor in the Center for Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His research areas include computer architecture, embedded systems, microprocessor-based industrial control, digital hardware design, and medical electronics.

E-mail: [email protected]

Sneh Anand

Sneh Anand is a professor in the Center for Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her research areas include biomedical instrumentation, rehabilitation engineering, biomedical transducers and sensors, biomechanics technology in reproduction research, and controlled drug delivery system.

She is the recipient of the IEEE life-time achievement award in 2004. She has contributed her 43 years of her life to Indian Institute of Delhi. She optimally combines her engineering training with biomedicine to bring in innovative concepts and give them a practical shape as products which benefit many people in need. With her dedicated biomedical R&D efforts, she has published more than 130 papers in reputed biomedical journals. She has eight inventions and four patents to her credit and has transferred eight know-how to Indian Industries.

E-mail: [email protected]