3D ultrasound computer tomography: data acquisition hardware

3D ultrasound computer tomography (USCT) is an imaging method capable of producing volume images with both high spatial and temporal resolution. The promising results of a 2D experimental setup of an ultrasound computer tomography system showing structures of 0.1mm in diameter encouraged us to build a new 3D demonstration system. The main problem of such a demonstrator is the high burst data rate of up to 36 GBytes per second for parallel recording of 1500 A-scans sampled at 12MHz and 12 bit. We present a hardware setup for an experimental 3D demonstrator, which is capable of handling high data rates. This demonstrator for the first time allows high resolution (sub wavelength) 3D ultrasound imaging in almost realtime.