ContextVision to Present New Research on Power-Saving, Low-Latency Processing of Ultrasound Images

Medical digital imaging leader to present research study conducted with Texas Instruments and High Performance Consulting at HPEC ‘15

Stockholm, Sweden – September 9, 2015 – At the 2015 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC ‘15) next week, ContextVision, the leading provider of medical image processing software, will present new results of research conducted with Texas Instruments (TI) and High Performance Consulting. The study outlines the achievement of low latency, reduced memory footprint and low power consumption through data streaming, specifically as a modification to portable ultrasound imaging devices.

“Portable medical imaging is an invaluable resource in the medical field,” said Mark Nadeski, director of business development in the Medical Business Group of TI. “What’s more, portable imaging devices are critical in bringing these capabilities to places and situations where mobility is important, where space is limited, or when imaging needs to take place in the field. For medical professionals such as first responders and those in military forces, it is crucial to have a system that allows for immediate, accurate diagnosis on site.”

“Modern portable devices use new power saving signal acquisition techniques such as synthetic aperture during beamforming,” said Ian Wainwright from High Performance Consulting. “Streamlining the acquired data enables the acquisition stages to use only a fraction of the power that was necessary for earlier designs while significantly increasing the frame rate.”
“Most of the existing middleware and software frameworks are not well suited for this type of processing model,” said Olivier Bockenbach, design architect and senior system engineer at ContextVision. “Implementing leading-edge image processing algorithms with data streaming requires revolutionary frameworks.”

As a result of this study, latency was kept at the strict minimum, while the required processing power was reduced when compared to traditional image-based implementations.
“Architectures like the C66x Keystone DSP from TI offer extraordinary performance per watt,” said Murtaza Ali, field application engineer at TI. “This device also offers the right level of determinism necessary for processing with hard (or high) real-time constraints and keeping the latency as low as possible.”

HPEC ’15 is the world’s premier conference on the convergence of high-performance and embedded computing. The HPEC community specializes in performance driven computing hardware, software systems and applications where performance matters. This year’s HPEC event, New England’s largest annual computing conference, will be held at the Westin Hotel in Waltham, Mass., September 15-17.

About ContextVision
ContextVision’s technology provides doctors with improved images, which are crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment. ContextVision is the industry leader in medical image analysis and enhancement software, with more than 150,000 installations worldwide through its OEM customers. The company started out as an industry pioneer more than 30 years ago, and is today developing the next generation of medical imaging software for 2D/3D/4D ultrasound, MRI, X-Ray, mammography and CT. ContextVision is based in Sweden and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker COV.