Embedded GPU Implementation for High-Performance Ultrasound Imaging

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a highly technical paper describing the integration of NVidia Jetson kit into the UPLA-OP system.  From my perspective, it's more a whitepaper focusing on the PCI-E interconnection of all modules with the Nvidia kit than a scientific paper. I somehow miss information about the software part of the project (firmware, communication protocols, etc.) and better evaluation of the performance. I did also not learn whether the system is already alive or the presented results are only theoretical estimations.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In the introduction, authors note that „A notable boost to such advancement has been recently given by the introduction of ultrasound open platforms [3]“. This statement is based only one reference to their own publication. In the next paragraph analogous situation „The so-called software-based open platforms [3] contain limited front-end electronics, and raw echo-data are immediately digitized“. There are other Ops in the field: SARUS, SonixTouch, Verasonics and etc.

[3] Boni, E.; Yu, A.C.H.; Freear, S.; Jensen, J.A.; Tortoli, P. Ultrasound Open Platforms for Next-Generation Imaging Technique Development. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control 2018, 65, 1078–1092, doi:10.1109/TUFFC.2018.2844560

30% of references are authors’ self-citation [3,9, 10, 17, 18, 20,21, 23, 28, 29]. It is inappropriate and violates the rules of MDPI „Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work“.

I don’t think that table 2 with the technical specification of Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier (available on the internet, i.e., https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-agx-xavier/ ) should be included in the manuscript. By the way, majority of parameters are repeated in the text (lines 92-97).

More experimental results should be carried out in order to validate the new architecture.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

A new system architecture, including PCI-Express interconnection, has been implemented. The Jetson Xavier processing module adds processing capabilities to the previous system and will allow the implementation of a fully embedded system that doesn’t need an external controlling PC, thanks to the integrated display pheripherals and USB connections for keyboard and mouse. However, I think the case study is not sufficient to verify the proposed system. More test and evaluation must be performed to illustrate the feasibility and possibility of the new system.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Updated manuscript version looks much better better than the previous version.

Reviewer 3 Report

Good work