ULA-OP 256: a portable high-performance research scanner

In the past few years, open scanners have rapidly advanced to offer a variety of solutions to ultrasound researchers. Each system presents specific performance in terms of number of channels, flexibility, processing power and raw data storage capability. This paper describes the 256-channel ULtrasound Advanced Open Platform (ULA-OP 256), designed to provide high performance in a small size. The high-speed interconnection of multiple front-end boards allows the direct and complete control of all transmit (TX) and receive (RX) waveforms. Up to 80 GB of RX data can be stored in the on-board DDR3 memory, while high real-time computational power (equivalent to 2500 GFLOP) is guaranteed by the available digital signal processors. The system implements a massive parallel multi-line beamformer in order to speed up the acquisition in high frame rate imaging techniques. This will enable imaging rates up to 4000 fps, depending on the image frame size.