A REAL-TIME SCAN CONVERSION ALGORITHM ON COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE MICROPROCESSORS

We have developed a new ultrasound scan conversion algorithm that can be executed very efficiently on modern microprocessors. Our algorithm is designed to handle the address calculations and input and output (I /O) data loading concurrently with the interpolation. The processing u nit's computing power can be dedicated to performing pixel interpolati ons while the other operations are handled by an independent direct me mory access (DMA) controller. By making intelligent use of the I/O tra nsfer capabilities of the DMA controller, the algorithm avoids spendin g the processing unit's valuable computing cycles in address calculati ons and nonactive pixel blanking. Furthermore, the new approach speeds up the computation by utilizing the ability of superscalar and very l ong instruction word (VLIW) processors to perform multiple operations in parallel. Our scan conversion algorithm was implemented on a multim edia and imaging system based on the Texas Instruments TMS320C80 Multi media Video Processor (MVP). Computing cycles are spent only on predet erminable nonzero output pixels. For example, an execution time of 11. 4 ma was achieved when there are 101,829 nonzero output pixels. This a lgorithm demonstrates a substantial improvement over previous scan con version algorithms, and its optimized implementation enables modern co mmercially available programmable processors to support scan conversio n at video rates. (C) 1996 Academic Press.