pyusbus: a python lib for ultrasound usb probes

Now managing to get images from an interson probe. USB connection seems flaky as hacked, but maybe that's me pushing hard on it.

In any case, it appears that by default we're getting 128 lines per image, going back and forth.

The usb device is tricky, presents itself as a certain VID/PID, but needs to be programmed before it goes in a "programmed PID" mode. Emulating it, we get access to another device, from which we can control, it seems, most of the commands. 

Already identified the "start / stop" ones, including both on motors and electrical pulser.

Now the challenge is to correctly take the beginning and end of a frame.

From there, the video can be extracted, and one can see what the other registers will do!

Now faster with the linear probe! Optimized code would look like:

import streamlit as st
import pyusbus as usbProbe
import cv2

image_zone = st.empty()

probe = usbProbe.UP20()

while True:     
    img = probe.getImage()   
    rgb = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_GRAY2BGR) 
    res = cv2.resize(rgb, dsize=(440, 500), interpolation=cv2.INTER_CUBIC)    
    image_zone.image(res)

See the full streamlit app.

Objective

The objective for this python lib is be able to get images from USB probes easily, under python, in a user-friendly API, getting images in 3 lines of code.

import pyusbus as usbProbe
probe = usbProbe.UP20() 
frames = probe.getImages(n=10) 

Getting signals and images from ultrasound mechanical probes is an interesting step to know what radiofrequency signals mean in ultrasound imaging, be it for non-destructive testing or medical imaging. The two pulse-echo boards are achieving this, however, this requires extra hardware (electronics, probes, a fair bit of soldering, ..). Getting ultrasound images could be more straightforward, especially considering ~1kUSD usb probes available on the market. Their image quality is quite good at first glance.

Target devices

This lib was tested on both a convex and a linear probe, each from a different manufacturer. Would you be interested in getting one, let me know so that I can refer to the fab contact at un0rick.cc.

Result

Not so bad for a first test ;)