Host-Based Single-Channel

• USB version: Half-size low-profile (2.536 in. height) USB-compliant printed circuit board
• PCB may be mounted inside a PC using internal 12V accessory supplies and internal USB data connection, or outboard using a 12V DC supply and USB cable
• B-mode and A-mode probe cable connectors at rear of card (integrated into card – no harnessing required)
• Includes software SDK and basic imaging SW
• Optional battery operation available (up to six hours of continuous use per full charge)

Note: The included software is supplied to allow demonstration of the features of the sub-system, only. This software is not recommended for, nor is it suited to, clinical use of any kind.

Probe Support

The sub-system supports a variety of CLI’s electromechanical probes.

High-voltage power supply (HVPS)

The HVPS provides voltage output of 12-100V. When coupled with CLI’s bipolar pulser (see below), this provides 200V peak-to-peak (maximum, using 50Ohm load). Voltage level is under software control. Therefore, the actual voltage applied to the transducer can be determined by the developer/programmer and will depend on allowable power limits (i.e., mechanical index) for a given application, and other customer requirements.

Pulser / Receiver

The sub-system employs a novel pulser design that we call “Agile Pulse Technology”. APT produces a bi-polar pulse that can be optimized for probe frequencies ranging from 2-50 MHz. This is especially important when using transducers with frequencies in excess of 10.0 MHz, where mono-polar “spike” pulses can often produce frequency spectra lower than expected. APT may also be used to drive the frequency lower, or higher, for a given transducer, producing the effect of a true multi-frequency probe.

The receiver employs bandpass filtering and envelope detection of the received waveform to provide accurate signal detection up to 50+ MHz. A log amplifier provides a stable, low-noise signal that preserves all of the received data. Digital TGC (dTGC) may be applied in active mode, frozen mode, or from archived images recalled for later viewing (see more about this, below). Digital filters are included in firmware that tailor certain receiver characteristics to the transducer frequency. A probe ID scheme allows the optimum digital and receive filters to be associated to particular probe types/frequencies. Other signal processing schemes are also possible through software upgrades.

Servo Controller

The servo controller has been designed to properly control CLI probes and to provide accurate position feedback to the imaging engine. CLI probe/servo combinations are typically accurate to within one degree (1º) of sweep angle. Final accuracy will be somewhat dependent on the total electronic stability of the host system and may exceed one degree.

Acoustic and position data are digitized and then written to host memory and may be streamed to memory for cine-mode recall, if supported in SW. Each image is drawn using 256 vectors and 8-bit grayscale. A wide variety of image geometries and displays may be formatted from this array and saved to disk in their raw format, including A/B-mode and A-mode displays. Saved images may later be recalled and displayed (individually or in cine mode), and dTGC and gray-level windowing applied as if the images were just acquired. This deserves emphasis: No data is lost in TGC or pre-processing algorithms when images are frozen and saved, and all dTGC and grayscale curves may be applied to recalled or frozen images. This feature allows a good deal of flexibility when reviewing saved images for diagnostic interpretation, whether it is done immediately after an examination or retrieved from archives years later. Images may be saved to the host’s hard drive, to a peripheral drive, or transferred via LAN or internet to a central archive. Uncompressed images occupy 512 KB of disc space. Standard compression utilities (e.g., PKZIP, WINZIP, etc.) reduce file size to less than 150 KB.