Parallel ultrasonic information processing

摘要

Apparatus for the parallel processing of ultrasonic information to derive simultaneously multiple vectors of ultrasonic information per ultrasonic transmission. In a preferred embodiment, the apparatus includes for each transducer element in a transducer array an analog to digital converter and a delay processing subsystem associated with each analog to digital converter. Each delay processing subsystem includes means for applying a main delay time period to each received digitized signal and a first and a second incremental time delay means for delaying by some additional incremental time period the digitized main delay signal. The output of each first incremental delay means of all of the delay processing subsystems is applied to a first summing network to produce a first vector of time synchronized echo information and, simultaneously, the output of each of the second incremental delay means of each delay processing subsystem is applied to a second summing network which produces a second vector of time synchronized echo information.