Integrated Circuits for Medical Ultrasound Applications: Imaging and Beyond

Medical ultrasound has become a crucial part of modern society and continues to play a vital role in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses. Over the past decades, the develop- ment of medical ultrasound has seen extraordinary progress as a result of the tremendous research advances in microelectronics, transducer technology and signal processing algorithms. How- ever, medical ultrasound still faces many challenges including power-efficient driving of transducers, low-noise recording of ultrasound echoes, effective beamforming in a non-linear, high- attenuation medium (human tissues) and reduced overall form factor. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the design of integrated circuits for medical ultrasound applications. The most important and ubiquitous modules in a medical ultrasound system are addressed, i) transducer driving circuit, ii) low- noise amplifier, iii) beamforming circuit and iv) analog-digital converter. Within each ultrasound module, some representative research highlights are described followed by a comparison of the state-of-the-art. This paper concludes with a discussion and recommendations for future research directions

Integrated Electronics for Wireless Imaging Microsystems with CMUT Arrays

Integration of transducer arrays with interface electronics in the form of single-chip CMUT-on-CMOS has emerged into the field of medical ultrasound imaging and is transforming this field. It has already been used in several commercial products such as handheld full-body imagers and it is being implemented by commercial and academic groups for Intravascular Ultrasound and Intracardiac Echocardiography. However, large attenuation of ultrasonic waves transmitted through the skull has prevented ultrasound imaging of the brain. This research is a prime step toward implantable wireless microsystems that use ultrasound to image the brain by bypassing the skull. These microsystems offer autonomous scanning (beam steering and focusing) of the brain and transferring data out of the brain for further processing and image reconstruction. The objective of the presented research is to develop building blocks of an integrated electronics architecture for CMUT based wireless ultrasound imaging systems while providing a fundamental study on interfacing CMUT arrays with their associated integrated electronics in terms of electrical power transfer and acoustic reflection which would potentially lead to more efficient and high-performance systems. A fully wireless architecture for ultrasound imaging is demonstrated for the first time. An on-chip programmable transmit (TX) beamformer enables phased array focusing and steering of ultrasound waves in the transmit mode while its on-chip bandpass noise shaping digitizer followed by an ultra-wideband (UWB) uplink transmitter minimizes the effect of path loss on the transmitted image data out of the brain. A single-chip application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is de- signed to realize the wireless architecture and interface with array elements, each of which includes a transceiver (TRX) front-end with a high-voltage (HV) pulser, a high-voltage T/R switch, and a low-noise amplifier (LNA). Novel design techniques are implemented in the system to enhance the performance of its building blocks. Apart from imaging capability, the implantable wireless microsystems can include a pressure sensing readout to measure intracranial pressure. To do so, a power-efficient readout for pressure sensing is presented. It uses pseudo-pseudo differential readout topology to cut down the static power consumption of the sensor for further power savings in wireless microsystems. In addition, the effect of matching and electrical termination on CMUT array elements is explored leading to new interface structures to improve bandwidth and sensitivity of CMUT arrays in different operation regions. Comprehensive analysis, modeling, and simulation methodologies are presented for further investigation.Ph.D

Direct Digital Demultiplexing of Analog TDM Signals for Cable Reduction in Ultrasound Imaging Catheters.

In real-time catheter based 3D ultrasound imaging applications, gathering data from the transducer arrays is difficult as there is a restriction on cable count due to the diameter of the catheter. Although area and power hungry multiplexing circuits integrated at the catheter tip are used in some applications, these are unsuitable for use in small sized catheters for applications like intracardiac imaging. Furthermore, the length requirement for catheters and limited power available to on-chip cable drivers leads to limited signal strength at the receiver end. In this paper an alternative approach using Analog Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) is presented which addresses the cable restrictions of ultrasound catheters. A novel digital demultiplexing technique is also described which allows for a reduction in the number of analog signal processing stages required. The TDM and digital demultiplexing schemes are demonstrated for an intracardiac imaging system that would operate in the 4 MHz to 11 MHz range. A TDM integrated circuit (IC) with 8:1 multiplexer is interfaced with a fast ADC through a micro-coaxial catheter cable bundle, and processed with an FPGA RTL simulation. Input signals to the TDM IC are recovered with -40 dB crosstalk between channels on the same micro-coax, showing the feasibility of this system for ultrasound imaging applications

축차 비교형 아날로그-디지털 변환기의 성능 향상을 위한 기법에 대한 연구

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2016. 8. 김수환.This thesis is written about a performance enhancement technique for the successive-approximation-register analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC). More specifically, it focuses on improving the resolution of the SAR ADC. The basic operation principles and the architecture of the conventional SAR ADC is examined. To gain insight on areas of improvement, a deeper look is taken at the building components of the SAR ADC. Design considerations of these components are discussed, along with the performance limiting factors in the resolution and bandwidth domains. Prior works which challenge these problems in order to improve the performance of the SAR ADC are presented. To design SAR ADCs, a high-level modeling is presented. This model includes various non-ideal effects that occur in the design and operation. Simulation examples are shown how the model is efficient and useful in the initial top-level designing of the SAR ADC. Then, the thesis proposes a technique that can enhance the resolution. The SAR ADC using integer-based capacitor digital-to-analog converter (CDAC) exploiting redundancy is presented. This technique improves the mismatch problem that arises with the widely used split-capacitor structure in the CDAC of the SAR ADC. Unlike prior works, there is no additional overhead of additional calibration circuits or reference voltages. A prototype SAR ADC which uses the integer-based CDAC exploiting redundancy is designed for automotive applications. Measurement results show a resolution level of 12 bits even without any form of calibration. Finally, the conclusion about the operation and effectiveness on the proposed technique is drawn.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.2 THESIS ORGANIZATION 5 CHAPTER 2 CONVENTIONAL SUCCESSIVE-APPROXIMATION-REGISTER ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTERS 7 2.1 INTRODUCTION 7 2.2 OPERATION PRINCIPLE OF THE CONVENTIONAL SAR ADC 8 2.2.1. OVERVIEW OF THE OPERATION 8 2.2.2. SAMPLING PHASE 10 2.2.3. CONVERSION PHASE 11 2.3 STRUCTURE OF THE CONVENTIONAL SAR ADC 15 2.3.1. FULL STRUCTURE OF THE CONVENTIONAL SAR ADC 15 2.3.2. CAPACITOR DIGITAL-TO-ANALOG CONVERTER (CDAC) 17 2.3.3. COMPARATOR 21 2.3.4. CONTROL LOGIC 23 2.4 PERFORMANCE LIMITING FACTORS 24 2.4.1. RESOLUTION LIMITING FACTORS 24 2.4.2. OPERATION BANDWIDTH LIMITING FACTORS 28 2.5 PRIOR WORK 30 2.5.1. INTRODUCTION 30 2.5.2. SPLIT-CAPACITOR STRUCTURE OF THE CDAC 31 2.5.3. REDUNDANCY AND CDAC WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION 33 2.5.4. ASYNCHRONOUS CONTROL LOGIC 36 2.5.5. CALIBRATION TECHNIQUES 37 2.5.4. DOUBLE-SAMPLING TECHNIQUE FOR SAMPLING TIME REDUCTION 38 2.5.6. TWO-COMPARATOR ARCHITECTURE FOR COMPARATOR DECISION TIME REDUCTION 40 2.5.7. MAJORITY VOTING FOR RESOLUTION ENHANCEMENT 41 CHAPTER 3 MODELING OF THE SAR ADC 43 3.1 INTRODUCTION 43 3.2 WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION OF THE CAPACITOR DAC AND REDUNDANCY 44 3.3 SPLIT-CAPACITOR ARRAY TECHNIQUE 47 3.4 PARASITIC EFFECTS OF THE CAPACITOR DAC 48 3.5 MISMATCH MODEL OF THE CAPACITOR DAC 51 3.6 SETTLING ERROR OF THE DAC 53 3.7 COMPARATOR DECISION ERROR 58 3.8 DIGITAL ERROR CORRECTION 59 CHAPTER 4 SAR ADC WITH INTEGER-BASED SPLIT-CDAC EXPLOITING REDUNDANCY FOR AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATIONS 60 4.1 INTRODUCTION 60 4.2 MOTIVATION 61 4.3 PRIOR WORK ON RESOLVING THE SPLIT-CAPACITOR CDAC MISMATCH FOR THE SAR ADC 64 4.3.1. CONVENTIONAL SPLIT-CAPACITOR CDAC FOR THE SAR ADC 64 4.3.2. SPLITTING THE LAST STAGE OF THE LSB-SIDE OF THE CDAC 66 4.3.3. CALIBRATION OF THE NON-INTEGER MULTIPLE BRIDGE CAPACITOR 67 4.3.4. INTEGER-MULTIPLE BRIDGE CAPACITOR WITH LSB-SIDE CAPACITOR ARRAY CALIBRATION 68 4.3.5. OVERSIZED BRIDGE CAPACITOR WITH ADDITIONAL FRACTIONAL REFERENCE VOLTAGE 69 4.4 PROPOSED INTEGER-BASED CDAC EXPLOITING REDUNDANCY FOR THE SAR ADC 70 4.5 CIRCUIT DESIGN 72 4.5.1. PROPOSED INTEGER-BASED CDAC EXPLOITING REDUNDANCY FOR SAR ADC 72 4.5.2. COMPARATOR 74 4.5.3. CONTROL LOGIC 75 4.6 IMPLEMENTATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 76 4.6.1. LAYOUT 76 4.6.2. MEASUREMENT RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS 82 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK 86 5.1 CONCLUSION 86 5.2 FUTURE WORK 87 APPENDIX. SAR ADC USING THRESHOLD-CONFIGURING COMPARATOR FOR ULTRASOUND IMAGING SYSTEMS 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY 120Docto

Integrated Circuit Design for Miniaturized, Trackable, Ultrasound Based Biomedical Implants

This thesis focuses on the design of an ultrasonography compatible implantable sensor platform, as a novel approach that implements a miniaturized, battery-less, real-time trackable parallel biosensing system. In addition to the frontend circuit, a sub-nW fully integrated pH sensor is designed in a way that can be easily integrated with the proposed sonography-compatible sensor platform. Combining the two integrated circuits together, the whole system will be able to map in vivo physiological information acquired from a distributed set of sensors on top of the ultrasound movie, leading to the idea envisioned as “augmented ultrasonography”. Implemented in a 0.18 μm technology, an ultrasound power and data frontend circuit is designed to enable medical sensing implants to operate in an ultrasonography compatible way. When placed within the field of view of an imaging transducer, the frontend circuit harvests the power through a piece of piezo crystal from a minimally modified brightness-mode (B-mode) ultrasound imaging process that is commonly adopted in modern medical practices. The implant can also establish bi-directional data communication channels with the imaging transducer, allowing data to be transmitted in a way synchronized to the frame rate of the B-mode film. The design of the circuit is made possible by a combination of ultra-low-power circuit techniques and novel frontend circuit topologies, as imaging ultrasound waves in the form of short pulses with extremely low duty cycle poses challenges that has not previously seen in other implantable sensor systems. The proposed prototype achieves a total area of 0.6mm² for the integrated circuit (IC), as well as 71mm theoretical maximum implantable depth (up to 40 mm is verified experimentally). These two together give opportunities for this design to become the next generation solution for deep-tissue bio-sensing implants. Realized using the same 0.18 μm technology, the fully integrated pH sensor is designed to deliver accurate pH readouts, at a reasonable speed of 1 sample per second, while consuming only 0.72 nW of power. Using an ion-sensitive field effect transistor (ISFET) and reference field effect transistor pair (REFET), the IC requires minimum additional post fabrication to deliver 10-bit resolution pH readouts at an end-to-end sensitivity of 65.8 LSB/pH. When working as a standalone device, this work advances the state-of-the-art of ISFET based pH sensor design. With an addition of 0.46 mm² of area, it is possible to integrate it with the ultrasound sonography compatible implant platform. This potential integration will further advance the vision of the augmented ultrasonography: real-time display of physiological information in a B-mode film, with the help from a distributed bio-sensor system for deep-tissue physiology monitoring

Electronics for Sensors

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore new advanced solutions in electronic systems and interfaces to be employed in sensors, describing best practices, implementations, and applications. The selected papers in particular concern photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) interfaces and applications, techniques for monitoring radiation levels, electronics for biomedical applications, design and applications of time-to-digital converters, interfaces for image sensors, and general-purpose theory and topologies for electronic interfaces