Commercial ultrasound (US) equipment, although widely employed in diagnostic applications, is not suitable for the development and test of new investigation methods. Their typical architecture, designed for clinical use, is often "closed" and does not fit the requirements of flexibility, data access, programmability, which are necessary for the implementation of original approaches. More flexibility is achieved in high-level platforms, but they are typically characterized by high cost and dimensions. In this paper, a novel US system, specifically designed for research purposes, is presented.??Its architecture is based on hi-end programmable devices to obtain the maximum flexibility with minimum cost and size. A preliminary example of application involving simultaneous B-mode and an experimental Doppler technique is discussed.