SonixDAQ Software (real-time)

This Demo software is a combination of three SDKs namely Texo&#8482;, Amplio&#8482;, and DAQ&#8482;. SDK 6.X comes with executable Texo Daq Demo file located at \sdk\bin\texo_daq_qt.exe. Alternately, Qt Creator can be used to compile the GUI demo using the steps provided at the Qt Creator page.

Image Sequencer
The Texo SDK is used to generate conventional imaging (on the right) followed by a sequences of plane transmits for the DAQ (on the left). To separate the two sequences, the trigger signal is turned off for the first part i.e. conventional imaging. This way the DAQ is not trigger during the regular B-mode imaging.

Following regular B-mode imaging, the trigger is turned on for the plane wave to trigger the DAQ for channel data acquisition. For plane wave transmit, the acquisition depth in the Texo is set to be zero. This forces the Texo not receive any data corresponding to plane waves. This way, the two parts (conventional B-mode imaging with Texo and Plane wave imaging with DAQ) is completely separated. Following data acquisition, the Amplio SDK is used to generate the B-mode image from the rf data for both Texo and DAQ data.

Real-time Imaging with DAQ
In order to enable real-time imaging with the DAQ, the file size is set to be small (i.e. 16MB). This allows the the DAQ data to be transferred to the PC fast (using the same USB connection). Note that this will result in pseudo real-time imaging with the DAQ since the streaming is not continuous and the DAQ constantly switches between acquisition and downloading.

Imaging Parameters
The parameters for each of these SDKs can be found in their corresponding tab. The Amplio can be turned on/off in real-time. This allows the user to look at both B-mode images or RF images in real-time. Furthermore, a real-time beamforming feature is also implement for the DAQ data. This enables the user to turn the beamfroming on/off in real-time.

DAQ Data Storage
The DAQ data corresponding to each download can be found in the D:\DAQRT\ folder. The Demos software keeps the last 30 downloads in this folder. Once it reaches the folder number 30, it will reset the counter and start overwriting the previously acquired folders.

Interface
The following figures show the main user interface of the Texo Demo Qt software (6.1) when
 * Amplio is On and DAQ Beamforming is Off,
 * Amplio is On and DAQ Beamforming is On,
 * Amplio is Off and DAQ Beamforming is On:







The image on the right is coming from the Texo (Sonix System) and the image on the left is coming from the DAQ. Note that the DAQ data acquisition is pseudo real-time since the DAQ first collects a certain buffer (e.g. 16MB) and then transfers it to the PC through the USB cable. To have true real-time stream from the DAQ to PC we need much higher bandwidth than what USB offers (e.g. using PCI express card) which requires complete hardware redesign.

Additional Features
With this version:
 * The user can scroll through different Texo frames when the imaging is stopped using the cine scroll.
 * The software also allows the user to store the RF data from Texo into .rf files with proper header information when the imaging is stopped. This stored .rf file can then be processed by the Amplio Demo Program for generating B-mode images off-line. The save button will save all the frames in the buffer into TexoData.rf file in the same folder as the executable file.