Teaching real-time ultrasonic imaging with a 4-channel sonar array, TI C6711 DSK and MATLAB

Ultrasonic medical imaging courses often stop at the theory or MATLAB simulation level, since professors find it challenging to give the students the experience of designing a real-time ultrasonic system. Some of the practical problems of working with real-time data from the ultrasonic transducers can be avoided by working at lower frequencies (sonar to low ultrasound) range. To facilitate this, we have created a platform using the ease of MATLAB programming with the real-time processing capability of the low-cost Texas Instruments C6711 DSP starter kit and a 4-channel sonar array. With this platform students can design a B-mode or Color-Mode sonar system in the MATLAB environment. This paper will demonstrate how the platform can be used in the classroom to demonstrate the real-time signal processing stages including beamforming, multi-rate sampling, demodulation, filtering, image processing, echo imaging, and Doppler frequency estimation.