84 Chapter 4  Instruments

A B

C D
FIGURE 4-12  A, Under conditions of high gain, electronic noise (with its fuzzy appearance) can
be seen on the display (arrows). B, With reduced gain, these weak voltages are not amplified
enough to be visualized. C, Lateral gain controls (arrow). D, Lateral gain adjusted to increase gain
from left to right.

Typical time gain compensation amplifiers compensate for
approximately 60 dB of attenuation. At the depth at which
maximum gain has been achieved, the echo brightness begins
to decrease because the time gain compensation can no longer
compensate (the amplifier gain cannot be increased further).
Thus attenuation and maximum amplifier gain determine the
maximum imaging depth. Maximum amplifier gain is deter-
mined by noise. Electronic noise (Figure 4-12, A-B) exists
in all electronic circuits. High-quality input amplifier circuit
noise levels are a few microvolts in amplitude. At maximum
gain, the amplifier noise and the weak echoes being ampli-
fied have comparable amplitude. Any further increase in gain
would only increase the noise, with weaker echoes being lost
in the noise and thus being unobservable.
Some instruments have lateral gain control, which allows
adjustment of gain laterally across the image (see Figure 4-12,
C-D). Regions with different attenuation values located later-
ally to each other can be compensated to yield similar image
brightnesses.
The overall gain control is adjusted first to yield a percep-
tible image on the display. Then the time gain compensation
(and possibly the lateral gain) controls are adjusted to yield
on-average uniform brightness over the image. Attenuation
variations throughout the image are thus compensated for,
yielding a good representation of the tissue cross-section
imaged.
Digitizer
After amplification, the echo voltages are digitized; that is,
they pass through analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). An
ADC (also called a digitizer) converts the voltage from analog
to digital form (Figure 4-13). The term analog means “pro-
portional,” and the term digital means “in the form of dis-
crete numbers.” Thus far in the instrument, the echo voltage
has been proportional to the echo pressure. After the ADC,
echo voltages are replaced by a series of numbers, and fur-
ther manipulation of the echoes is accomplished as digital
signal processing (mathematical manipulation of numbers
representing echoes). This is similar to what is done in all
digital electronics such as CD and DVD players and digital
cellular telephones that handle, store, and process sound and
pictures in digital form. The ADC interrogates the incoming
voltage at regular intervals and determines its value at each
interrogation instant. The interrogation rate must be twice
the highest frequency involved in the interrogated voltage to
preserve (in the subsequent digital number stream) all the
harmonics contained in the interrogated voltage. For exam-
ple, to digitize a 5-MHz continuous wave voltage properly,
 Chapter 4  Instruments 85

97 From

ADC beam
former

Filtering Detection Compression

Voltage

Analog To
image
Time processor

FIGURE 4-14  The signal processor performs filtering,

detection, and compression functions. The processor
receives digital signals from the beam former and, after pro-
cessing, sends them on to the image processor.
2
7
9

2
4
3

1
10
5
5

1
7
3

2
2
0

Digital
B Time BOX 4-2  Functions of the Signal
Processor
• Bandpass filtering
• Amplitude detection
Voltage

• Compression (dynamic range reduction)

Analog
Time Summer (Adder)
C
After all the channel signal components are delayed prop-
erly to accomplish the focus and steering functions, they are
added together in the adder to produce the resulting scan
line, which, along with all the others, will be displayed after
Voltage

signal processing and image processing. Reception apodiza-

Analog
Time
D
FIGURE 4-13  A, The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) con-
verts (B) the analog (proportional) echo voltage into a series
of numbers representing the sampled voltage. The higher the
sampling rate of the analog-to-digital converter, the better the
temporal detail of the voltage is preserved. C, High sampling
rate. D, Low sampling rate.
the digitizing rate must be at least 10 MHz; that is, the voltage
is interrogated 10 million times per second, yielding a stream
of 10 million digitized values per second describing the orig-
inal analog voltage.
ADCs convert the analog voltages representing echoes
to numbers for digital signal processing and storage.
Echo Delays
After amplification and digitizing, the echo voltages pass
through digital delay lines to accomplish reception dynamic
focus and steering functions.
tion and dynamic aperture functions are also accomplished
as part of this summing process.
The beam former is responsible for electronic beam
scanning, steering, focusing, apodization, and aperture func-
tions with arrays.
SIGNAL PROCESSOR
The reception portion of the beam former amplifies and com-
bines the contributions from the individual elements and
channels to form the stream of echoes returning from each
transmitted pulse and sends them on to the signal processor.
Operations carried out here include filtering, detection, and
compression. The signal processor is diagrammed in Figure
4-14. Box 4-2 lists the functions of the signal processor.
Filtering
Tuned amplifiers are used to reduce noise in the electronics.
They operate at a specific frequency with a bandwidth that
includes the frequencies in the returning echoes and elimi-
nates the electronic noise outside that bandwidth. A tuned
amplifier is simply an amplifier with an electronic filter called
the bandpass filter. A bandpass filter is one that passes a range