The Ultrasound File Format (UFF)

Purpose

The Ultrasound File Format (UFF) aims to create a standard for the exchange of ultrasound data, data such as

• raw channel data,
• beamformed RF data,
• beamformed envelope data,
• beamformed compressed data, and
• velocity estimates.

UFF includes descriptions for the sequence of ultrasound emissions and recordings, probe geometry, wave types, excitation pulses, impulse responses, speed of sound, sampling frequency, etc.

Current version (0.3.0) covers channel data only.

Mailing list

If you want to keep updated on the UFF initiative, you can subscribe to the UFF mailing list.

Current version (0.3.0)

• Documentation
• Code
• Draft

Previous versions

• v0.2: documentation
• v0.1: documentation

Wiki contents

• The procedure
• Previous formats
• Roadmap
• Help
  • Getting started with bitbucket
• Tests
  • Chunking test
  • Compression test
• Publications
  • IUS2018 proceeding paper
  • IUS2018 poster

HDF5

UFF uses Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) due to its ability to store and organize large amounts of data. HDF5 is a platform independent data model and file format that supports an unlimited variety of datatypes. It is designed for flexible and efficient I/O in local and remote systems.

HDF5 has become a de facto standard in the scientific community. Many scientific environments count with a HDF5 API such as MATLAB, Python, or Julia.

The UFF taskforce

UFF is developped by the UFF taskforce, a group of researchers from 11 research groups. The initiative kicked-off in September 2017, after a meeting celebrated at the International Ultrasonics symposium in Washintong. Here is a list of the current members:

Former members of the UFF taskforce