As today's standard screening methods often fail to diagnose breast cancer before metastases have developed, an earlier breast cancer diagnosis is still a major challenge. To improve this situation, we are currently developing a fully three-dimensional ultrasound computer tomography (3D USCT) system, promising high-quality volume images of the breast. For obtaining these images, a time-consuming reconstruction has to be performed. As this is currently done on a PC, parallel processing in reconfigurable hardware could accelerate both signal and image processing. In this work, we investigated the suitability of an existing data acquisition (DAQ) system for further computation tasks. The reconfiguration features of the embedded FPGAs have been exploited to enhance the systems functionality. We have adapted the DAQ system to allow for bidirectional communication and to provide an overall process control. Our results show that the studied system can be applied for data processing. 1. Introduction Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in Europe and North America. Unfortunately, in today’s standard screening methods, breast cancer is often initially diagnosed after metastases have already developed [1]. The presence of metastases decreases the survival probability of the patient significantly. Thus, early breast cancer diagnosis is still a major challenge. A more sensitive imaging method could allow for detection in an earlier state and thus enhance the survival probability. With this ultimate goal, we are researching and developing a three-dimensional ultrasound computer tomography (3D USCT) system for early breast cancer diagnosis [2]. This method promises reproducible volume images of the female breast fully in 3D. Our initial measurements of clinical breast phantoms using the first 3D prototype showed promising results [3, 4] and led to a new and optimized aperture setup [5], currently built and shown in Figure 1. It is equipped with over 2000 ultrasound transducers. Further virtual positions of the ultrasound transducers are created by rotational and translational movements of the complete sensor aperture. Figure 1: Image of the semiellipsoidal aperture of the new 3D USCT II. It is equipped with 628 ultrasound senders and 1413 receivers, grouped into 157 transducer array systems, mounted at the inner surface of the measurement basin. In USCT, the interaction of unfocused ultrasonic waves with an imaged object is recorded from many different angles. During a measurement, the emitters sequentially send an ultrasonic wave front which
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