Method and device for synthesizing analog wave beam in continuous wave Doppler module
Technical Field
The invention relates to a signal processing method and a device in a medical ultrasonic diagnosis system, in particular to a method and a device for realizing beam synthesis of continuous wave signals in the ultrasonic diagnosis system by using reverse application delay lines. The method and the device are particularly suitable for an ultrasonic diagnosis system, particularly a portable ultrasonic diagnosis system with small requirement on volume, and the scheme can also be adopted for the beam synthesis of B images of a low-grade ultrasonic system.
Background
In the current ultrasonic diagnostic system, there are several schemes for beam forming of the continuous wave doppler receiving part: schemes in which quadrature demodulation is done together with beamforming, digital beamforming schemes, multiple delay line schemes, uncompensated single delay line schemes, etc.
The orthogonal demodulation and beam synthesis together realize the scheme: and adding a quadrature demodulator to each channel after low-noise amplification. And the delay link of beam synthesis is completed by controlling the phase of the local oscillation signal of the orthogonal demodulator on each channel. The I, Q paths of signals of the orthogonal demodulation output are generally current signals, and I, Q current signals of all channels can be directly connected together to complete an adding link of beam forming. Then, an I/V conversion (current to voltage) is added to complete the quadrature demodulation and beam synthesis. In the scheme, each channel needs to be additionally provided with a local oscillation phase control quadrature demodulator, so that the cost is higher, and each quadrature demodulator needs to introduce local oscillation and phase control signals, so that more control signals are needed, and the control is more complex. The control signals mostly come from the digital domain and easily introduce noise.
Digital beam-forming scheme: and directly carrying out AD sampling on the radio-frequency signals on each channel after low-noise amplification, and completing the delay and addition link of beam forming in a digital domain. Due to the large dynamic range of continuous wave signals, radio frequency sampling of CW signals requires a high-speed AD with a large number of bits (typically greater than 16 bits, which may not result in LICENSE). And each channel needs to be added with an AD, so the scheme is definitely expensive.
The multi-delay line scheme comprises the following steps: and adding an analog delay line on each channel after low-noise amplification to complete a delay link of beam synthesis, and then using the operational amplifier as an adder to complete an accumulation link of beam synthesis. Although the multi-delay line scheme is favorable for impedance matching of each channel, adding a delay line to each channel makes the volume of the beam forming part become quite large, which is not favorable for system integration. Of course, costs are also increased.
Uncompensated single delay line scheme: this scheme is closer to the scheme of the present invention, but the attenuation of each channel is not corrected by a compensation method. That is, the amplitudes of the channels are not compensated, and thus there is a disadvantage that the uniformity of the amplitudes of the channels is not good.
Disclosure of Invention
The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a scheme for realizing beam forming of continuous wave signals in an ultrasonic diagnostic system by using a compensated reverse application delay line, aiming at some defects in the prior art.
The invention adopts the following technical scheme: designing a method for synthesizing an analog beam in a continuous wave Doppler module, the method comprising the following steps:
a. the multi-channel echo signals of the ultrasonic probe are amplified through low-noise amplification;
b. the amplified multi-channel echo signals are subjected to amplitude compensation through an amplitude compensation element connected in series on the delay line so as to compensate gain difference between LC network channels of the delay line;
c. adding the amplitude-compensated channel signals to a delay line LC network consisting of an inductor and a capacitor from taps corresponding to the channels;
d. and finishing signal accumulation while finishing signal delay of each channel signal by the delay line LC network, and finally outputting a beam-forming signal by a signal output end of the LC network.
And under the condition that the output of the low-noise amplification is a multipath voltage signal, the amplitude compensation element connected in series on the delay line is a resistor connected in series with each channel at the input end of the LC network, and the amplitude of a signal generated at the input end of the LC network by each channel is compensated by adjusting the resistance value of the resistor connected in series with each channel.
The amplitude compensation element connected in series with the delay line may also be an operational amplifier connected in series with each channel at the input end of the LC network, and compensates the amplitude of the signal generated at the input end of the LC network by each channel by adjusting the amplification factor of the operational amplifier connected in series with each channel.
If the output of the low-noise amplification is a multi-path current signal, I/V conversion is firstly carried out on the current signal to obtain a voltage signal. In this case, the amplitude compensation of the echo signals of the individual channels can take place in the I/V conversion stage or after the I/V conversion the voltage signals can be compensated for in the same way as described above.
The technical scheme adopted by the invention for solving the technical problem also comprises the following steps: designing a synthetic device of analog wave beam in a continuous wave Doppler module, comprising:
the delay line LC network consists of an inductor and a capacitor and is used for receiving echo signals of each channel, finishing signal delay and signal accumulation of the signals of each channel and finally outputting analog beam-forming signals;
and the input signal amplitude compensation element is connected to the input end of the delay line LC network in series and is used for adjusting the amplitude of the input signal of each channel entering the delay line LC network. The input signal amplitude compensation element can be implemented as follows:
the first embodiment is as follows: the input signal amplitude compensation element comprises resistors which are respectively connected in series before each channel enters the input end of the LC network, the resistance value of the resistor which is connected in series with each channel is determined through experiments, and the selection principle of the resistance value of the resistor which is connected in series with each channel is the requirement of compensating the difference of the gains of the LC network channels of the delay line.
Example two: the input signal amplitude compensation element comprises operational amplifiers which are respectively connected in series before each channel enters the input end of the LC network, the amplification factor of the operational amplifier which is connected in series with each channel is determined through experiments, and the selection principle of the amplification factor of the operational amplifier which is connected in series with each channel is the requirement of compensating the difference of the gains between the LC network channels of the delay line.
The number of channels of the signal channel is large, for example, if the number of channels is N, the LC network should have 2N taps, and the 1 st to nth channels are respectively connected in series with the resistors R1 to RN and then are connected to the 2 nd to 2 nth even taps of the LC network; the N is selected in the range of 8 to 64.
When the number of the signal channels is 10, the LC network has 20 taps, the 1 st to 10 th channels are respectively connected in series with the resistors R1 to R10 and then are connected to the 2 nd to 20 th even taps of the LC network, and the resistances of the series resistors R1 to R10 are respectively: 510. 470, 363, 330, 270, 220, 151, 100, 51, and 33 ohms.
Compared with the prior art, the method and the device for simulating the beam forming in the continuous wave Doppler module have the following advantages that: because the analog delay line only consists of the inductance-capacitance network, the price of the delay line is determined to be very low; in addition, the invention reversely applies the analog delay line to simultaneously complete the delay and accumulation functions of beam synthesis, so that the continuous wave beam synthesis module only adopts one delay line and does not need to add an operational amplifier to complete the accumulation function; the wave beam synthesis of CW is realized by adopting an analog delay line without any control, thereby simplifying the control of the whole CW module and reducing the coupling path of digital noise; because the amplitude of each channel is compensated, the amplitude consistency of each channel of each CW echo is good. The invention has the advantages of low cost, small volume and good amplitude consistency of CW echoes of each channel.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a flow chart of the signal processing of the continuous wave Doppler receiver module of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an ultrasonic probe focus echo;
FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the internal structure of a delay line LC network with N taps;
FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram of the present invention for implementing beamforming by reverse application of an analog delay line;
FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of the low noise series resistor equivalent to the internal resistance of the ideal voltage source plus voltage source;
FIG. 6 is an equivalent schematic block diagram corresponding to FIG. 5 with only tap number T20 having a signal input;
FIG. 7 is a schematic view of a measurement model of the technical effect of the present invention;
FIG. 8 is a test waveform of a signal applied to an analog delay line from a T2 tap, wherein the thin solid line represents the waveform of the amplifier output and the thick solid line represents the waveform of the signal before the input terminal is connected in series with a resistor;
FIG. 9 is a test waveform of a signal added to an analog delay line from a T4 tap, wherein a thin solid line shows a waveform of an output of an amplifier, and a thick solid line shows a waveform of the signal before an input terminal is connected in series with a resistor;
fig. 10 is a test waveform diagram of signals added to the analog delay line from the taps T2 and T4, wherein a thin solid line represents the waveform diagram of the output of the amplifier, and a thick solid line represents the waveform diagram of the signal before the input terminal is connected with the resistor in series.
Detailed Description
The device and method of the present invention will be described in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and the embodiments shown in the drawings.
The signal processing flow of the Continuous Wave (CW) doppler receiving module proposed by the present invention is shown in fig. 1. And the multi-channel echo signals of the probe are amplified through low-noise amplification, and the amplified signals enter the analog beam synthesis unit. And the analog beam synthesis unit performs delay focusing accumulation on the multi-path amplified echo signals. And synthesizing the multi-path echo signals into one path of signal after the beam synthesis. If the CW signal transmission adopts square wave transmission, a low-pass filter is added after the analog beam synthesis to filter out the higher harmonics of the square wave except the fundamental frequency so as to output sine wave. The filtered signal enters the quadrature demodulation block. If the transmission is a sine wave then the beamformed output may be output directly to the quadrature demodulation block (a low pass or band pass filter may also be added to suppress out of band noise). The quadrature demodulation module demodulates the input radio frequency signal into I, Q two paths of baseband signals, namely, doppler audio signals really concerned by us. The demodulated I, Q signals are low pass filtered to remove the sum frequency components generated by quadrature demodulation. The low-pass filtering also functions as an anti-aliasing filter before the AD sampling. The low-pass filtered signal is gain adjusted to fit the fluctuation range of the AD input. The two paths of baseband signals I, Q after gain adjustment are sampled by an ADC. The sampled data is subjected to digital signal processing so as to output a sound spectrogram signal of CW Doppler and stereo signals of a left channel and a right channel.
The focus of the present invention is on a single delay line based analog beamforming unit. Due to the different distances from the echo focus to each array element on the surface of the probe, the delay from the focus echo to each array element on the surface of the probe is different, as shown in fig. 2. The beam forming has the function of adjusting the time delay of each echo signal of the probe, compensating the time delay difference from the focus echo signal to each array element of the probe, and adding the echo signals of each channel in phase. The invention adopts an analog delay line for adjusting the delay of each channel. The internal node of the analog delay line is composed of an LC network, and the internal structure of an N-tap delay line LC network is shown in a schematic block diagram in FIG. 3. Delay T of each tap d Is determined by the following formula:
in the formula: l is t Is the total inductance (unit: uH), C of the delay line t Is the total capacitance (unit: pF) of the delay line, and N is the total tap number of the delay line. Total delay T D Is represented by the formulaDetermining:
characteristic impedance Z 0 Is determined by the following formula:
rise time t of delay line r Is determined by the following formula:
in the formula: t is t ro For delaying the rise time of the line output signal, t ri Is the rise time of the delay line input signal. The bandwidth BW of the delay line is determined by:
BW≈0.35/t r
the total number of taps N of the delay line can be calculated by:
N≈(T D /t r ) 1.36
the above parameters can be used to select a proper delay line during design.
Usually, the delay line is applied by inputting the signal from IN and tapping T from different taps n And outputting to obtain different phase delay signals. In an ultrasound system, the number of channels of a CW echo signal is large (typically at least eight)Channel) and the delay line that can reach the target is larger in volume in order to reach a certain delay accuracy. If one delay line is selected for each channel, the size of the CW module becomes large, which is not favorable for system integration, especially for portable ultra-system applications. The invention adopts a method of reverse application of a delay line and simultaneously completes the delay and accumulation functions of CW signal beam synthesis processing. Amplitude attenuation of each channel is basically the same by using an amplitude compensation method, and the problem that the amplitudes of the channels are inconsistent due to reverse application of delay lines is solved. Next, the system has 10 CW echo signalsThe channel is used as an example to illustrate the technical scheme of the invention.
The CW echo signal of the ultrasonic system of the invention is a 10-channel voltage signal after low-noise amplification. The parameters of the simulated delay line adopted by the beam synthesis are as follows: 20 taps, 20nS delay for each tap, 400nS total delay, and 100OHM characteristic impedance. The 10-channel voltage signal of the low noise amplifier LNA9-0 is connected to the analog delay line through the series resistor R10-1: t20, T18, T16, T14, T12, T10, T8, T6, T4, T2 taps. As shown in fig. 4. Where BF _ OUT is the analog beamformed signal. In the testing process, 10 voltage signals can be equivalent to 10 ideal voltage signal sources, and the resistors connected in series on the signals can be equivalent to the internal resistors of the voltage sources, as shown in fig. 5. Since the internal resistance of the ideal voltage source is 0, if a certain channel has no signal, the corresponding tap is equivalent to be grounded through the series resistor. Fig. 6 illustrates an equivalent circuit with a signal input to only the T20 tap.
As can be seen from the superposition principle of the linear circuits, in fig. 5, the current flowing through the output-to-ground resistor R11 is equal to the algebraic sum of the currents generated when the respective taps are individually input. That is, applying the superposition principle, we complete the accumulation function of beam synthesis. According to the model of fig. 5, we can adjust the resistance value of the series resistor (corresponding to the internal resistance of the voltage source IN fig. 5) of the signal input to compensate the amplitude of the signal generated at the IN terminal by each channel. The application of the delay line relates to a network of an inductor, a capacitor and a resistor, and a plurality of excitations are added, so that the resistance value of the series resistor for quantitative calculation and compensation is difficult. The resistance value of the compensation resistor is determined through an experimental method, and through tests, the following compensation resistor combination is selected.
TABLE 1 tapped compensation series resistor resistance
Input tap
Numbering
|
T2
|
T4
|
T6
|
T8
|
T10
|
T12
|
T14
|
T16
|
T18
|
T20
|
Series resistor
(ohm)
|
510
|
470
|
363
|
330
|
270
|
220
|
151
|
100
|
51
|
33
|
After the test is compensated, signals are input from all taps, and the amplitude measurement result obtained at the IN end is as follows:
TABLE 2 IN-END OUTPUT AMPLITUDE AND DELAY MEASUREMENT VALUES FOR COMPENSATED TAPS
Input tap
Numbering
|
T2
|
T4
|
T6
|
T8
|
T10
|
T12
|
T14
|
T16
|
T18
|
T20
|
Output signal
Peak to peak value
|
33.4
|
31.4
|
35.7
|
32.6
|
33
|
32.4
|
35.5
|
34.2
|
32.4
|
31.5
|
Output voltage
Relative input
Signal delay
(ns)
|
40
|
82
|
124
|
160
|
202
|
236
|
269
|
318
|
360
|
430
|
Theoretical time delay
|
40
|
80
|
120
|
160
|
200
|
240
|
280
|
320
|
360
|
400
|
To the theory
Error in time
|
0
|
2
|
4
|
0.3
|
2.4
|
4.3
|
11
|
2
|
0.46
|
30
|
The average value of the output signal is 33.21 and the standard deviation is 1.5mV, which is calculated according to the table data. The gain difference between the channels does not exceed 1DB, and the requirement of gain consistency is met. There is an error of 30ns at the input of the delay line T20, which is the result of the mismatch between the impedance of the delay line and the series resistance of T20 at the far end of the delay line, which is only 30 OHMs. If the value of T20 is adjusted to be 100OHM, the series resistance of all input taps is increased to achieve the compensation effect. This tends to increase the attenuation of the input signal. The accuracy of the delay and the attenuation of the signal amplitude are a result of the tradeoff between the resistances of the series resistors. It is advantageous to add a slightly larger delay to the last tap, so the invention uses this set of series resistance parameters.
The working principle of the device of the invention is briefly described as follows: the multi-path voltage signals output by the low-noise amplifier are subjected to signal amplitude compensation through resistors connected in series with the delay line, the compensated signals are added into the LC network of the delay line from different taps, and the signals entering the LC network of the delay line are delayed through the LC network of the delay line. The delay of the input signals of different taps is determined by the number of LC cells tapped to the output IN terminal. Because the signals added by different taps enter the LC network of the same delay line, according to the superposition principle, the delay line completes the signal delay and simultaneously completes the accumulation of the input signals of different taps, namely the signals output by the delay line are the signals after beam synthesis through delay and accumulation.
In order to examine the technical effects of the method and the device of the present invention, the present invention specifically designed a measurement model as shown in fig. 7. After the amplitude attenuation is compensated by adopting the input series resistor, the analog delay line is subjected to delay accumulation test. Because the amplitude of the output of the analog delay line is small, in order to obtain a more accurate test result, the output of the analog delay line is amplified and then tested.
In the three test result diagrams shown in fig. 8, 9 and 10, the thin solid line represents the waveform of the output of the amplifier, and the thick solid line represents the waveform of the signal before the input terminal is connected in series with the resistor. The thick solid line CH1 (CH 1, CH2 in the figure are channel 1 and channel 2 of the oscilloscope) waveform is the waveform at INPUT, and since the output waveform at BF _ OUT is small, we amplify it with an amplifier, the delay produced by the amplifier is 285.4ns, and the thin solid line represents the output AMP _ OUT of the CH2 waveform amplifier.
The desired delay result of the present invention is the delay from BF _ OUT to INPUT, and the measured values in FIGS. 8-10 are the time difference from the peak of the AMP _ OUT signal to the peak of the INPUT signal. The frequency of the signal is 2.5MHz, and the period is 400ns. The time difference between the INPUT signal peak and the next AMPOUT peak is therefore: the time difference from the peak of the AMP _ OUT signal to the peak of the INPUT signal is subtracted from 400ns, which is the delay of AMP _ OUT with respect to INPUT, and the delay of the amplifier is subtracted from 285.4ns, which is the delay of BF _ OUT with respect to INPUT. The accuracy of this delay measurement may be affected by the accuracy of the delay measurement by the amplifier itself. If the delay difference between the two tap INPUTs is to be measured, the AMP _ OUT measured directly from the two tap INPUTs is subtracted from the INPUT delay, thereby eliminating the effect of the amplifier delay measurement on the delay difference measurement between the two tap INPUTs.
The test proves that the compensated reverse application simulation delay line completely meets the requirements of the CW module simulation beam synthesis of the ultrasonic diagnosis system. Thereby providing a new method for realizing the CW receiving module in the ultrasonic diagnostic system.
The most important key point of the invention is that the series resistor of each input tap of the analog delay line is used for amplitude compensation, the compensation is not limited on the resistor, and the amplitude can be compensated on the whole path from the output of the low-noise amplifier to the input tap of the analog delay line. For example, an operational amplifier is connected in series with each channel on the path, and each channel adjusts different amplification factors to perform amplitude compensation. If the low-noise amplifier outputs a current signal, the scheme can be applied to carry out I/V conversion on the current signal, and the conversion link can also carry out amplitude compensation on each channel.