Global semiconductor major Texas Instruments of US is now completely dependent on its Indian arm, TI India expertise for the development of the ultrasound analogs. The team at Bangalore is now working to develop analogs that help to further decrease power consumption, reduce noise and enhance the efficiency of the analogs for ultrasound products. The flagship product for ultrasound is the AFE58xx family of analog front ends developed by the R&D team in India

The AFE58xx family of fully-integrated analog front ends (AFEs) for portable to high-end ultrasound diagnostic equipment is known for its superior image quality and reduced power consumption. Indian engineers have been able to provide the high power performance and sensitive picture quality.

The development of devices with smaller form factors, low power, noise ratios and high levels of precision and accuracy is of great importance to companies. The effective use of power management technology results in the reduction of battery size, thus helping devices to be smaller in size and have longer run times, but for the same amount of available power, which is essential in the creation of portable and hand-held devices, said Praveen K Ganapathy, director, Business Development, Texas Instruments India.

The design of the AFE5805 chip was out of the Bangalore centre where the project team was involved right from the drawing board stage. The team worked closely with their counterparts in the other global design centres of TI to draw up the specifications for the chip and design the product. The device consists of an octal channel low noise amplifier (LNA), voltage controlled amplifier (VCA) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for ultrasound applications. Integrating the appropriate design into the process technologies to achieve low power and high performance was a major challenge in the development of this device. TI India is devising the portable and affordable ultrasound devices to reduce healthcare costs.

India is a key market for medical equipment. The development of portable medical systems, capable of performing complex imaging functions, will help medical technology to move from tertiary points of healthcare like hospitals to primary points like doctors' offices, ambulances and even into patients' homes. In emergencies or in remote areas, where rendering of critical healthcare facilities might be critical, portable ultrasound technology will provide non-invasive, quick, safe and cost-effective options, said Ganapathy.

Visible trends in ultrasound medical imaging segment are towards portable, mid-range and low-end devices for remote use along with high resolution imagery, low power, less noise, compact size portable and increased efficiency.

Among the other products coming from India stables include the DSPs used in the imaging system for Doppler processing, 2D, 3D and even 4D imaging as well as a host of post-processing algorithms to increase functionality and performance. The TX734, which was the first device in the TX7xx family, is a quad-channel, high-voltage pulser, also known as transmitter, is also specifically designed for portable to mid-range medical ultrasound systems. In addition, there are also toolkits for ultrasound applications like the TI Embedded Processor Software Toolkit for Medical Diagnostic Ultrasound (STK-MED) which is a collection of several standard ultrasound algorithms optimized for TI's C64x+ architecture.