A dynamic focusing technique for delta-sigma-based beamformers

Beamformation using oversampling delta-sigma (ΔΣ) modulators has been proposed for diagnostic ultrasound. Such a beamformer can reduce the size, complexity and cost of an imaging system while providing adequate signal-to-quantization noise ratio (SQNR). High quality images can also be generated if dynamic receive delays are applied correctly. Several dynamic focusing techniques were previously proposed. Generally, an additional bit or extra compensation circuit is required to preserve the power and frequency distribution of the signal. Without preserving the power and frequency distribution, the image background noise is increased. In this paper, an alternative technique is presented. The new technique exploits the symmetry of focusing delays relative to the center of a transducer array. By properly synchronizing the delays and selecting the inserted values, no noise is added to the beam sum signal and the image background level is not increased. Using real ultrasound data, it is shown that the proposed technique provides the same imaging performance as the previous approaches with reduced system complexity by using only a single bit to encode the output of the ΔΣ modulator.