Aloka ProSound Alpha 10, Service Manual, Page: 116 / 405

MN2-2008, Rev.2
SECTION 4 Principle of System Operation
4 - 83
Beam Processor part
Beam Processor part contains Beam Processor 1 and Beam Processor 2.
Beam Processor 1 is for processing of B/W echo, analyzing PW/CW Doppler signal,
processing of eTracking (Ver.3~) and the interface of physiological signal. Beam Processor
2 is for color flow calculation.
For B, M mode data, the RF signal from Timing Processor is processed by detection, LOG
compression, AGC, Relief, Contrast etc. (It has two, the same circuitry for parallel
processing), then go through the pre-processing below.
AIP(Ver.6~): It detect the direction and strength of border of difference object, and
then makes edge enhancement and/or smoothing process for the
direction. The speckle noise in the parenchyma is suppressed and the
contour of the edge of the organ is enhanced. In addition, Both AIP
and Edge Optimizer does not work simultaneously.
Edge Optimizer(Ver.6~):
It detect the border line on image. Then improves the connection of
border line by edge enhance. In addition, Both AIP and Edge
Optimizer does not work simultaneously.
Line correlation: It correlates the same depth of data between neighbouring Ultrasound
beam and makes the lateral smoothness better and reducing noise. In
addition, the line correlation is not applied on AIP images.
Frame correlation:It correlates the same position of data among the previous frames of
image and makes the smoothness better in time aspect and reducing
noise.
Then, it adds attributes, such as data type, time stamp and beam number etc., then
transferred to DIU part via BUS LVDS.
For PW Doppler data, the RF signal from Timing Processor that is processed by
quadrature detection, is used and for CW Doppler data and Analog PW Doppler
data(Ver.6~, M01706 and after), it comes from Mecha Frontend. Both data is analyzed by
FFT in Beam Processor 1.
Then, it adds attributes data, and then transferred to DIU part via BUS LVDS.
For Color flow data, the RF signal from Timing Processor that is processed by quadrature
detection, is used as well. The data is processed by Beam Processor 2 that consists of
Corner Turning Memory that stores the Rx data for number of time that is set by Color
Average, then go through the Wall Motion filter (Ver.6~, Addition of Advanced Wall
Motion filter only for eFlow) and auto correlation process (Correlating the data with a
beam before then calculate velocity, variance and power). After that, it goes through noise
filter and spatial filter then passed to frame correlation.
Then, it adds attributes data, and then transferred to DIU part via BUS LVDS.