Cephasonics announces echo-64

Cephasonics Announces a complete 64-channel ultrasound system delivered on 2 small-format circuit boards that sets new standard for ability to integrate/build small-format high-performance ultrasound systems

Today, Cephasonics announced Echo-64, .  The Echo-64 is designed to be used in OEM applications to power new ultrasound systems or integrate ultrasound into preexisting CAP (computer-added medical procedures) products and systems.  Based on Cephasonics’ Itasca architecture, the Echo board-level systems provide the ability to custom design and build full-featured ultrasound systems that offer a high-level of flexibility, small footprint, and excellent image quality, thus enabling fast time-to-market for development and integration of new ultrasound capabilities.

Cephasonics founder and CEO, Richard Tobias stated, “Integrating ultrasound into other medical systems used in various procedures can dramatically enhance the effectiveness of computer-aided medical procedures by adding real-time ultrasound-based measurement capabilities.  Our Echo 64 systems will make it easier to design and commercialize new innovations in how ultrasound can be integrated into supporting real-time medical procedures.”

Cephasonics’ Itasca architecture represents a new approach to designing ultrasound systems where more processing power utilizing FPGAs is located closer to the source of the data.  This enables an ultrasound system to process more complex algorithms in real-time avoiding data bottlenecks in transferring data to a connected computer. 

This architectural approach allows for accessing and utilizing much greater amounts of data in real time enabling new applications of ultrasound that cannot be accomplished by traditional ultrasound systems.  This design paves the way for the development of much higher performance systems perfect for AI and quantitative measurements. 

According to Dr. Jeremy Dahl, an ultrasound researcher and Associate Professor of Radiology at Stanford University's School of Medicine., "Architectures like Itasca that can move computational power closer to the source of the ultrasound data will help make new approaches such as software beamforming a commercial reality.  These types of technologies will be critical to the future of diagnostic ultrasound imaging because they enable novel imaging applications to be utilized for the betterment of patient care.”

Specifications:

The Echo-64 ultrasound system features a dual-board configuration that provides 64 transmit and receive channels with 3 levels of pulsing.  It also supports real-time streaming and plane wave imaging eliminating many of the constraints of traditional beam-forming ultrasound.   The system is made up of 2 interconnected circuit boards that measure approximately 4”W X 5”D x 3”H.

The Echo-64 system utilizes Cephasonics’ new high-speed fiber computer interface, iCUF-Link, which is able to sustain data rates supporting 64-channels continuously at 50 M samples / second in real-time to a connected PC.  The system supports transmit output pulse rates from 100Hz to 50MHz as well as 5ns delay resolution.  On the receive side, the Echo 64 system features a 12-bit ADC with an ultra-low 2.4dB noise figure.  It will support input frequencies from 1MHz to 20MHz and sampling rates of 20MHz and 50MHz.

The new Echo-64 system operates with APIs from the Cephasonics software development environment, CuSDK.  CuSDK enables medical product companies as well as researchers to easily develop new AI and real-time quantitative ultrasound applications with a Cephasonics Cicada development system and then easily port them to new Echo-based ultrasound systems.  The Echo-64 systems will also offer options for add-on power supply and probe interface adapters.

Lastly, with the Echo-64 design, Cephasonics can also create implementations of higher channel-count or specialized application board-level ultrasound solutions for custom applications of ultrasound including transmit only/receive only implementations.

Pricing & Availability:

The Echo-64 kit will be available to order starting in Q2 2022 and be priced in single unit quantities at $15K/kit.