An endoscopie imaging system based on a two-dimensional CMUT array: real-time imaging results

Real-time catheter-based ultrasound imaging tools are needed for diagnosis and image-guided procedures. The continued development of these tools is partially limited by the difficulty of fabricating two-dimensional array geometries of piezoelectric transducers. Using capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) technology, transducer arrays with widely varying geometries, high frequencies, and wide bandwidths can be fabricated. A volumetric ultrasound imaging system based on a two-dimensional, 16×l6-element, CMUT array is presented. Transducer arrays with operating frequencies ranging from 3 MHz to 7.5 MHz were fabricated for this system. The transducer array including DC bias pads measures 4 mm by 4.7 mm. The transducer elements are connected to flip-chip bond pads on the array back side with 400-μm long through-wafer interconnects. The array is flip-chip bonded to a custom-designed integrated circuit (IC) that comprises the front-end electronics. Integrating the front-end electronics with the transducer array reduces the effects of cable capacitance on the transducer's performance and provides a compact means of connecting to the transducer elements. The front-end IC provides a 27-V pulser and 10-MHz bandwidth amplifier for each element of the array. An FPGA-based data acquisition system is used for control and data acquisition. Output pressure of 230 kPa was measured for the integrated device. A receive sensitivity of 125 mV/kPa was measured at the output of the amplifier. Amplifier output noise at 5 Mhz is 112 nV/√Hz. Volumetric images of a wire phantom and vessel phantom are presented. Volumetric data for a wire phantom was acquired in real-time at 30 frames per second.Publisher's Versio

Minimally redundant 2-D array designs for 3-D medical ultrasound imaging

PubMed ID: 19131299In real-time ultrasonic 3-D imaging, in addition to difficulties in fabricating and interconnecting 2-D transducer arrays with hundreds of elements, there are also challenges in acquiring and processing data from a large number of ultrasound channels. The coarray (spatial convolution of the transmit and receive arrays) can be used to find efficient array designs that capture all of the spatial frequency content (a transmit-receive element combination corresponds to a spatial frequency) with a reduced number of active channels and firing events. Eliminating the redundancies in the transmit-receive element combinations and firing events reduces the overall system complexity and improves the frame rate. Here we explore four reduced redundancy 2-D array configurations for miniature 3-D ultrasonic imaging systems. Our approach is based on 1) coarray design with reduced redundancy using different subsets of linear arrays constituting the 2-D transducer array, and 2) 3-D scanning using fan-beams (narrow in one dimension and broad in the other dimension) generated by the transmit linear arrays. We form the overall array response through coherent summation of the individual responses of each transmit-receive array pairs. We present theoretical and simulated point spread functions of the array configurations along with quantitative comparison in terms of the front-end complexity and image quality.Publisher's Versio

Beamforming and hardware design for a multichannel front-end integrated circuit for real-time 3D catheter-based ultrasonic imaging

We are working on integrating front-end electronics with the ultrasound transducer array for real-time 3D ultrasound imaging systems. We achieve this integration by flip-chip bonding a two-dimensional transducer array to an integrated circuit (IC) that comprises the front-end electronics. The front-end IC includes preamplifiers, multiplexers, and pulsers. We recently demonstrated a catheter-based real-time ultrasound imaging system based on a 16 x 16-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array. The CMUT array is flip-chip bonded to a front-end IC that includes a pulser and preamplifier for each element of the array. To simplify the back-end processing and signal routing on the IC for this initial implementation, only a single array element is active at a time (classic synthetic aperture (CSA) imaging). Compared with classic phased array imaging (CPA), where multiple elements are used on transmit and receive, CSA imaging has reduced signal-to-noise ratio and prominent grating lobes. In this work, we evaluate three array designs for the next generation front-end IC. The designs assume there are 16 receive channels and that numerous transmit pulsers are provided by the IC. The designs presented are: plus-transmit x-receive, boundary-transmit x-receive with no common elements, and full-transmit x-receive with no common elements. Each design is compared with CSA and CPA imaging. We choose to implement an IC for the full-transmit x-receive with no common elements (FT-XR-NC) design for our next-generation catheter-based imaging system.Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health. IC fabrication was provided by National Semiconductor. Bill Broach and the members of the Portable Power Group at National Semiconductor provided valuable process and circuit design discussions.Publisher's Versio

An integrated circuit with transmit beamforming flip-chip bonded to a 2-D CMUT array for 3-D ultrasound imaging

PubMed ID: 19942502State-of-the-art 3-D medical ultrasound imaging requires transmitting and receiving ultrasound using a 2-D array of ultrasound transducers with hundreds or thousands of elements. A tight combination of the transducer array with integrated circuitry eliminates bulky cables connecting the elements of the transducer array to a separate system of electronics. Furthermore, preamplifiers located close to the array can lead to improved receive sensitivity. A combined IC and transducer array can lead to a portable, high-performance, and inexpensive 3-D ultrasound imaging system. This paper presents an IC flip-chip bonded to a 16 x 16-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array for 3-D ultrasound imaging. The IC includes a transmit beamformer that generates 25-V unipolar pulses with programmable focusing delays to 224 of the 256 transducer elements. One-shot circuits allow adjustment of the pulse widths for different ultrasound transducer center frequencies. For receiving reflected ultrasound signals, the IC uses the 32-elements along the array diagonals. The IC provides each receiving element with a low-noise 25-MHz-bandwidth transimpedance amplifier. Using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) clocked at 100 MHz to operate the IC, the IC generated property timed transmit pulses with 5-ns accuracy. With the IC flip-chip bonded to a CMUT array, we show that the IC can produce steered and focused ultrasound beams. We present 2-D and 3-D images of a wire phantom and 2-D orthogonal cross-sectional images (B-scans) of a latex heart phantom.This work was supported by NIH grant CA99059. Work was performed in part at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility (a member of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure, Network) which is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ECS-9731293.Publisher's Versio

Integration of 2D CMUT arrays with front-end electronics for volumetric ultrasound imaging

PubMed ID: 18334340For three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound imaging, connecting elements of a two-dimensional (2D) transducer array to the imaging system's front-end electronics is a challenge because of the large number of array elements and the small element size. To compactly connect the transducer array with electronics, we flip-chip bond a 2D 16 x 16-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array to a custom-designed integrated circuit (IC). Through-wafer interconnects are used to connect the CMUT elements on the top side of the array with flip-chip bond pads on the back side. The IC provides a 25-V pulser and a transimpedance preamplifier to each element of the array. For each of three characterized devices, the element yield is excellent (99 to 100% of the elements are functional). Center frequencies range from 2.6 MHz to 5.1 MHz. For pulse-echo operation, the average -6-dB fractional bandwidth is as high as 125%. Transmit pressures normalized to the face of the transducer are as high as 339 kPa and input-referred receiver noise is typically 1.2 to 2.1 mPa/root Hz. The flip-chip bonded devices were used to acquire 3D synthetic aperture images of a wire-target phantom. Combining the transducer array and IC, as shown in this paper, allows for better utilization of large arrays, improves receive sensitivity, and may lead to new imaging techniques that depend on transducer arrays that are closely coupled to IC electronics.Publisher's Versio

An integrated circuit with transmit beamforming and parallel receive channels for real-time three-dimensional ultrasound imaging

We present the design of an integrated circuit (IC) that will be flip-chip bonded to a 16 x 16-element CMUT array. The IC provides 16 receive channels which can be configured to receive along either of the array diagonals or on any single row of the array. On transmit, all 256 elements can be used to transmit arbitrarily focused beams. Focused transmission with the full array is made possible by on-chip pulsers and memory. A 25-V pulser and 8-bit shift register is provided for each element of the array. Prior to each transmit, new values are loaded into the shift registers. Current-con trolled one-shots control the transmit pulse widths. Circuit simulations and the IC layout are presented. Simulations predict that delay values can be loaded in less than 1.3 mu s and show the generation of precisely timed pulses. The IC is being prepared for submission to National Semiconductor for fabrication in a high-voltage BiCMOS process.Dr. Karaman is supported by TUBITAK of Turkey through grant 106M33APublisher's Versio