Chapter 6

Question 1

beam former

Answer 1

the part of an instrument that accomplishes electronic beam scanning, apodization, steering, focusing, and aperture with arrays.

Question 2

image former

Answer 2

the portion of a system operating on Principle 2 that acquires the echo information from the signal processor, performs retrospective, virtual-beam computations and sends the results to the display.

Question 3

graphics processing unit (GPU)

Answer 3

an electronic device that rapidly performs calculations to accelerate the creation of images.

Question 4

scan line

Answer 4

a line produced on a display that represents ultrasonic echoes returning from the body. A sonographic image is composed of many such lines.

Question 5

virtual reception beam

Answer 5

an imaginary reception beam that can be thought of as determining the echo produced at each pixel location in the image

Question 6

virtual transmission beam

Answer 6

an imaginary laser-thin transmitted ultrasound beam that can be though of as producing the excellent detail resolution throughout the image that is accomplished wit retrospective, computed beam forming.

real physical laser-thin beams are not possible.