Strategies for Hardware Reduction on the Design of Portable Ultrasound Imaging Systems

In the last decade, ultrasonic imaging systems have been an essential tool for diagnosis in medical and industrial applications, especially in the Non Destructive Testing area (NDT). Conventional ultrasonic imaging devices produce high quality images with good resolution and contrast. However, these machines are usually associated to a high cost in hardware resources, as well as in the time required for the data acquisition and processing stages. This fact hinders the development of good quality, compact and low-power systems that can operate in a wide range of real-time applications.