  This work proposes a component based model for the raw ultrasound signals
acquired by the transducer elements. Based on this approach, before undergoing
the standard digital processing chain, every sampled raw signal is first
decomposed into a smooth background signal and a strong reflectors component.
The decomposition allows for a suited processing scheme to be adjusted for each
component individually. We demonstrate the potential benefit of this approach
in image enhancement by suppressing side lobe artifacts, and in improvement of
digital data compression. Applying our proposed processing schemes to real
cardiac ultrasound data, we show that by separating the two components and
compressing them individually, over twenty-fold reduction of the data size is
achieved while retaining the image contents.
