Acquisition of High Frame Rate Ultrasound Data through Ethernet for Telemedicine Applications

摘要

Diagnosis of cancer involves assessment of elasticity by which the parameters such as density and velocity are evaluated. The velocity of the induced shear waves orthogonal to the ultrasound wave propagation is used to determine the stiffness of tissues for distinguishing between malignant and benign in transient elastography. For computing the speed of shear wave propagation an ultrafast scanner is required to gather the huge amount of data for interpretation in receiver engine. An algorithm is used which reduces the data sent to processing engine within handling range of the laptop. Information from scanner is ported for processing through standard Ethernet interface. Data from piezoelectric crystals are stored in FPGA databanks and converted into Packets. The layered model of User Datagram Protocol, Internet Protocol and Ethernet frame contains data and overheads bytes. The Data is transferred to laptop through Gigabit Ethernet Media Access Control and Gigabit physical layer devices. The packets received in laptop are observed using standard software tools. The raw data can be analyzed remotely by experts in laptop which involves parallel receive beam forming, image display and velocity detection using Graphical User Interface. Standard Ethernet hardware interface enables data processing in laptop which reduces the overall cost and size of the hardware enabling the methodology to be used for telemedicine applications in rural areas.