Fabrication and Characterization of a 20-MHz Microlinear Phased-Array Transducer for Intervention Guidance

This paper describes the design and fabrication of a miniature ultrasonic phased-array transducer used for intervention guidance. Currently, ultrasound probes are often placed at the body surface of the patients, leading to several drawbacks including the limitation of penetration and image quality....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control ferroelectrics, and frequency control, 2017-08, Vol.64 (8), p.1261-1268
Main Authors: Chiu, Chi Tat, Kang, Bong Jin, Eliahoo, Payam, Abraham, Theodore, Shung, K. Kirk
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Animals
Cattle
Circuit design
Crosstalk
Equipment Design
Fabrication
High-frequency imaging
Humans
Image acquisition
Image quality
Imaging
Liver
Liver - diagnostic imaging
miniature transducer
Miniaturization - instrumentation
Needles
Phased arrays
Reliability
Transducers
Ultrasonic imaging
ultrasonic transducer array
Ultrasonography - instrumentation
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Summary:This paper describes the design and fabrication of a miniature ultrasonic phased-array transducer used for intervention guidance. Currently, ultrasound probes are often placed at the body surface of the patients, leading to several drawbacks including the limitation of penetration and image quality. In order to improve the reliability of the guiding process, we propose a miniature phased-array transducer that can be placed adjacent to the intervention device during the interventional procedure. In this paper, we report the work that has been carried out on the development of this miniature phased-array transducer. It comprised 48 elements housed in a 3-mmdiameter needle. A specially designed flexible circuit was used for accommodating the transducer array in the long, thin needle housing. The center frequency and the fractional bandwidth were approximately 20 MHz and 42%, respectively, with an average crosstalk lower than -30 dB. The axial and azimuth resolutions were approximately 80 and 210 μm, respectively. The imaging capability of the transducer was further evaluated by acquiring the B-mode images of a needle in a cow liver. The performance of the proposed phased-array transducer demonstrates the feasibility of such an approach for interventional guidance.
ISSN:0885-3010
1525-8955
DOI:10.1109/TUFFC.2017.2709623