Investigation of Real-Time Capabilities of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 for a Fourier-Based Imaging Algorithm

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Abstract

Point-of-Care Ultrasound (PoCUS) devices have the potential to enable safe, fast and cost-efficient medical imaging, which can democratize access to medical diagnostics. However, achieving high image quality and real-time performance despite the significant resource constraints of mobile devices is essential for clinical adoption. Fourier-Based Imaging (FBI) is emerging as an alternative to the simple and well established delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming, as it promises improved image quality albeit higher computational effort. This work investigates an efficient implementation of FBI and evaluates the performance on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 system-on-chip (SoC) CPU and GPU using a synthetic radiofrequency (RF) ultrasound dataset. CPU profiling identified the real-to-complex (r2c) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a primary bottleneck, with optimizations reducing runtime from 2993 ms to 892 ms per frame. GPU acceleration via the clFFT library and a custom OpenCL kernel for k-space processing, enhanced through kernel fusion, constant memory usage, and instruction-level tuning, further reduced runtime to 388 ms, a 2.86x speed-up over the optimized CPU version. Although 30 fps real-time performance was not reached under these imaging parameters (2.58 fps), reducing the number of transmitters increased throughput to approximately 6 fps at the expense of image fidelity. These results demonstrate the mobile GPU’s potential for FBI and suggest that real-time execution on next-generation SoCs is within reach.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)176-180
Seitenumfang5
FachzeitschriftIEEE Open Journal of Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
Jahrgang5
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 23 Sept. 2025
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Externe IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-3295-0727/work/195438010
ORCID /0000-0002-0676-6926/work/195442037
ORCID /0000-0001-5921-9478/work/195442361
ORCID /0009-0004-9063-5161/work/195442364
unpaywall 10.1109/ojuffc.2025.3613273
ORCID /0000-0002-2421-6127/work/198593509
ORCID /0009-0004-0685-2463/work/198594928

Schlagworte

Fächergruppen, Lehr- und Forschungsbereiche, Fachgebiete nach Destatis

Schlagwörter

  • Kernel, Graphics processing units, Fast Fourier transforms, Runtime, Real-time systems, Libraries, Imaging, Ultrasonic imaging, Radio frequency, Optimization