What is it?

Non-destructive testing and imaging ultrasound modalities have been around since the ’50s. More and more ultrasound-based initiative are emerging, mostly focusing on image processing - while the hardware has been left behind. Several teams have produced successful designs for the different possible uses, mostly efforts from research laboratories. Most have been used on commercial US scanners, traditionally used as experiment platforms, but they are not cheap, and yield very little in terms of data access and control. Others have been developed in labs, but, sadly, very few have been open-sourced. This particular project stems from a previous Beaglebone-based design, as well as an Arduino-like module-based design.

It has also been shown that simple (be it low-power, low-cost and small) can be achieved - and this, even for relatively complex systems, based on 16 to 64 parallel channels front-end processing and software back-end processing (embedded PC or DSP). This makes it a bit more complex for the layman, hobbyist, or non-specialist researcher to use, not to mention the very little information that is accessible.

This board

This board is a single-channel ultrasound pulse-echo board, with high voltage pulser, TGC and ADC, plus a bit of storage so that you can store for 8Mb worth of signals.

Previous work

This element has been built as part of a kit, which is composed of :

• Analog board
• 20Msps ADC pHAT
• High voltage pulser

Headers are not included! (nor is the RPi W)

Overall description

What does it look like?

Why did you make it?

Nothing existed yet!

What makes it special?

Nothing similar had been done so far with open source FPGA for high-quality processing.

Example of acquisitions

Example of a single line for a couple of cm echoes.

The green line is TGC, the blue line is the signal.

Corresponding signal

Example of a 2D image

The whole repo is on github.

Documentation

Full documentation is on doc.un0rick.cc

With some detailed specs, or example of an acquisition.

On GitHub

See https://github.com/kelu124/un0rick

Shipping

• Now that the board design is stabilized, it's being produced by MacroFab - which does the fulfillment.
• Attention: The board comes without headers/jumpers/SMA/RPi .. up to you to put yours!
• Beware of the taxes: the UPS/DHL courier may ask import taxes, depending on your country, as it is shipped from the US.

Disclaimer

This project is distributed WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, INCLUDING OF MERCHANTABILITY, SATISFACTORY QUALITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Also:

• This is not a medical ultrasound scanner! It’s a development kit that can be used for pedagogical and academic purposes - possible immediate use as a non-destructive testing (NDT) tool, for example in metallurgical crack analysis.
• As in all electronics, be careful, especially with high voltages.
• This is a learning by doing project, I never did something related -> It’s all but a finalized product.
• Ultrasound raises questions. In case you build a scanner, use caution and good sense!
• The board is designed to be used with a raspberry pi, I haven't explored the FTDI part so far, and I haven't explored the possibility to flash the board from the RPI. * In all cases, I can and will help you work with the un0rick board, but I can't and won't teach you how to operate a raspberry pi.