An efficient architecture of ultrasonic scan conversion for implementing the cubic convolution interpolation

The nearest neighbor and the bilinear interpolation methods are widely adopted to perform ultrasonic scan conversion in commercial ultrasound systems. The reason is that they are easy to implement and can satisfy real-time requirement. As the hardware technology advances in the recent decade, more complex yet more eligible interpolation methods can be realized. However, few articles in the literature concern details about the reconstruction of ultrasonic images. In this paper the authors propose an efficient architecture of ultrasonic scan conversion for implementing the cubic convolution interpolation. Some parameters needed to calculate in interpolation processes can be previously designed in ROMs (Read Only Memory) to improve computational efficiency. The system requirement analysis and computer simulations have shown the appealing feasibility in real-time practice and superior reconstruction quality to conventional interpolation methods.