By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    migraine home remedies and-devices
    The Best Home Remedies for Migraines
    June 5, 2025
    learn to recognize and treat yeast infections
    Most Commonly Asked Questions About Yeast Infections
    November 17, 2021
    Advanced lung cancer diagnosis systems used by doctors
    Advanced Lung Cancer Diagnosis Systems Used by Doctors
    March 6, 2022
    Latest News
    5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
    July 31, 2025
    Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
    July 20, 2025
    How Probate Planning Shapes the Future of Your Estate and Family Care
    July 17, 2025
    Beyond Nutrition: Everyday Foods That Support Whole-Body Health
    June 15, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Image
    Boomer Voice
    June 12, 2013
    The Anatomy of Health Insurance [Infographic]
    April 19, 2012
    Patient Commando Features Canadian Women Changing Healthcare
    August 23, 2013
    Latest News
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
    How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
    July 17, 2025
    How communities and healthcare providers can address slip and fall injuries with legal awareness
    July 17, 2025
    Let Your Lawyer Handle the Work Before You Pay Medical Costs
    July 6, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: What’s the Big Deal about GPUs in Ultrasound Imaging?
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Technology > Medical Innovations > What’s the Big Deal about GPUs in Ultrasound Imaging?
DiagnosticsMedical InnovationsTechnology

What’s the Big Deal about GPUs in Ultrasound Imaging?

erica.carnevale
erica.carnevale
Share
6 Min Read
CPU-GPU Ultrasound Illustrator
SHARE

If you’ve wondered how a little video game box could produce and destroy high-resolution, 3D fantasy worlds in the blink of an eye, look no further than the console’s graphics processing unit or GPU.

GPUs are better equipped than CPUs – the central processing unit that processes data in most computers – to quickly compute functions and algorithms related to rendering images.

If you’ve wondered how a little video game box could produce and destroy high-resolution, 3D fantasy worlds in the blink of an eye, look no further than the console’s graphics processing unit or GPU.

GPUs are better equipped than CPUs – the central processing unit that processes data in most computers – to quickly compute functions and algorithms related to rendering images.

More Read

Telehealth, the Nucleus of Patient Care
Interview with Todd Dunsirn of True Process
Are Millennials Born That Way? Survey on ePatients
A Healthcare Data Pro’s Innovation Wish List
2012 Predictions for Health IT

CPUs process blocks of data sequentially, which is great for work like spreadsheet analysis and database queries. However, CPUs are not optimal for forming images and the calculations needed to give the combination of fast frame rate and high resolution required in video games and ultrasound.

Digital imaging, especially 3D and 4D images, has to process a large amount of data very rapidly. The GPU has hundreds of cores that can process thousands of data sets in parallel. This gives the semiconductor chip the processing power that’s needed to render fine structures, grayscale, and color contrast in ultrasound images without compromising speed. GPUs can speed up software processes by up to 100x over a CPU alone.

CPU-GPU Ultrasound Illustrator

(source: GPU Programming in MATLAB, Mathworks.com)

Advanced ultrasound beamforming and post-processing technologies can greatly benefit from access to increased computing power now and in the future. As evident by the chart below, theoretical CPU performance has peaked over time as GPU performance continues to improve exponentially.

GPU-CPU Chart

(source: CPU vs. GPU Performance, MichaelGalloy.com)

Embracing this, the development of the CARESTREAM Touch Prime Ultrasound System presented an opportunity to shift away from conventional CPU-only approaches.

Our new system architecture offloads many functions from the CPU to integrated advanced GPU processing units. Compared to CPU-only architectures, the tradeoffs between frame rate and image resolution can be drastically reduced.

The GPU power in the Touch Prime Ultrasound System combines with our proprietary beamforming hardware. The inherent data parallelism and high throughput offered by this software and hardware combination is the basis for the beamforming architecture introduced by Carestream as SynTek architecture.

SynTek architecture is a significant departure from the serial line-by-line acquisition approaches. With Syntek, a given tissue region is insonified in multiple directions from independent transmit firings. The echoes received by the transducer are coherently summed together, taking into account the difference in round-trip travel time from the transducer to the tissue location and back for each of the firings. Thus, by combining the information independently obtained from many such transmit events throughout the imaging region of interest, the SynTek architecture in effect synthesizes a transmit beam that is narrow not only at a single point or region in the image (around the transmit focus in conventional imaging), but over the entire spatial extent, leading to improved image quality.

In color flow and Doppler imaging, SynTek architecture allows for more consistent visualization of subtle tissue contrast differences, while simultaneously improving the ability to see small structures. There is more information at depth as well as increased frame rates for improved visualization of moving structures.

In a conventional system, using such a transmit scheme with multiple transmit firings would have led to a reduction in frame rate. However, the parallel acquisition and real-time processing capabilities of the SynTek architecture leads to minimal compromise in frame rate at the cost of image quality.

Innovation Powered by Leading-Edge Technology
Medical ultrasound imaging continues to seamlessly leverage advances from the consumer space, and the use of GPUs in combination with highly-integrated front-end hardware in the CARESTREAM Touch Prime Ultrasound System is a prime example of this trend.

Download my technology brief: “Touch Prime: Advanced ultrasound imaging with an extraordinary user experience” to learn more about how Carestream is harnessing the power of GPUs and parallel computing to bring more technology-driven applications to ultrasound.

Ajay Anand, CarestreamAjay Anand is a member of the ultrasound R&D team at Carestream Health. He has more than 10 years’ experience leading the development of novel ultrasound technologies, and is a co-inventor of more than 20 patent filings in the field of medical ultrasound.

 

The post What’s the Big Deal about GPUs in Ultrasound Imaging? appeared first on Everything Rad.

Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
Health
July 31, 2025
holistic dental
Holistic Dentist Services Are Natural and Safe
Dental health Specialties
July 28, 2025
botox certification
Help Improve People’s Skin Health Via Botox Certification
Skin Specialties
July 22, 2025
Telemedicine Apps
Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
Health
July 20, 2025

You Might also Like

fitness gadget
eHealthMedical DevicesMobile HealthWellness

Boomer Voice: Fitness and Fitness Gadgets for Boomers

August 21, 2013
Image
BusinesseHealthHealth ReformHospital AdministrationMedical RecordsMobile HealthPublic HealthTechnologyWellness

HIMSS 2013: Mayhem or Magic?

March 10, 2013

What’s Next for Wearable Technology and What It Means for Health Data

August 4, 2014

Mobility Matters in Physician Satisfaction with EHR Solutions

October 16, 2014
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?