Abstract

New high performance programmable processors have been emerging since the early 1990s for various digital media applications, such as digital TV, set-top boxes, desktop video conferencing, and digital camcorders. Programmable processors, e.g., TIs TMS320C64x , Hitachi/Equator Technologies MAP-CA, IBMs CELL processor can offer high performance utilizing instruction-level, data-level parallelism, high I/O bandwidth, and parallel computing. These processors achieve this high performance while providing relative ease in programmability. During this decade, with continued performance improvement and cost reduction, programmable processors will become a preferred choice in designing imaging and video systems due to their flexibility in incorporating new algorithms and applications via programming and faster-time-to-market. In this talk, suitability of these processors in medical imaging will be discussed through reviewing the core routines of several medical imaging modalities, such as ultrasound, and present how these routines can be mapped to these processors and their resultant performance. An ultrasound-system whose back-end is completely based-on a programmable processor will also be discussed. The advantages of such a programmable system will be highlighted. The CELL processor, whose performance is order of magnitude greater than that of its preceding processor, thus holds a great potential for future programmable medical imaging systems.