The applications of ultrasound in medicine have been increasing in the last decade either in diagnostics or in treatments. Ultrasound is routinely used in clinical examinations, such as pregnancy exams. On the other hand, a typical ultrasound system costs somewhere between 100k$ to 250k$ because of its (1) expensive ultrasound transducers, (2) large driving electronics, (3) processing and visualization units. High cost and large volume of the ultrasound systems prevent even wider usage of these systems. It is possible to extent the use of ultrasound in clinic environment like a stethoscope, if the size and cost had been reduced orders of magnitude. The aim of this work is to develop an ultraportable and very low cost diagnostic ultrasound imaging probe; by combining inertial sensors with the probes. The manual motion of the probe by the operator's hand movement enables scanning. The position of the probe is tracked using inertial sensors. Finally, the acoustic reflections are registered together by the help of position information of the probe to form an image.TÜBİTA

Top-orthogonal-to-bottom electrode (TOBE) arrays, also known as row-column arrays, have shown great promise as an alternative to fully-wired 2D arrays, owing to a considerable reduction in channels. Novel imaging schemes with bias-switchable TOBE arrays were previously shown to offer promise compared to previous non-bias-switchable row-column imaging schemes and compared to previously-developed Explososcan methods, however, they required significant coherent compounding. Here we introduce Ultra-Fast Orthogonal Row-Column Electronic Scanning (uFORCES), an ultrafast coded synthetic aperture imaging method. Unlike its FORCES predecessor, uFORCES can achieve coherent compounding with only a few transmit events and may thus be more robust to tissue motion. We demonstrate through simulations that uFORCES can potentially offer improved resolution compared to the matrix probes having beamformers constrained by the paraxial approximation. Also, unlike current matrix probe technology incorporating microbeamforming, uFORCES with bias-switchable TOBE arrays can achieve ultrafast imaging at thousands of frames per second using only row-and column addressing. We also demonstrate experimental implementation of uFORCES using a fabricated 128×128 electrostrictive TOBE array on a crossed 25 µm gold wire phantom and a tissue mimicking phantom. The potential for improved resolution and ultrafast imaging with uFORCES could enable new essential imaging capabilities for clinical and pre-clinical ultrasound.

Top Orthogonal to Bottom Electrode (TOBE) arrays, also known as row-column arrays, hold great promise for fast high-quality volumetric imaging. Bias-voltage-sensitive TOBE arrays based on electrostrictive relaxors or micromachined ultrasound transducers can enable readout from every element of the array using only row and column addressing. However, these transducers require fast bias-switching electronics which are not part of a conventional ultrasound system and are non-trivial. Here we report on the first modular biasswitching electronics enabling transmit, receive, and biasing on every row and every column of TOBE arrays, supporting up to 1024 channels. We demonstrate the performance of these arrays by connection to a transducer testing interface board and demonstrate 3D structural imaging of tissue and 3D power Doppler imaging of phantoms with realtime B-scan imaging and reconstruction rates. Our developed electronics enable interfacing of bias-switchable TOBE arrays to channel-domain ultrasound platforms with software-defined reconstruction for next-generation 3D imaging at unprecedented scales and imaging rates.

Here we introduce electrostrictive hot-pressed lead magnesium niobate (PMN) with low lead titanate (PT) doping as a candidate transparent transducer material. We fabricate transparent high-frequency single-element transducers and characterize their optical, electrical, and acoustic properties. PMN-PT may offer sensitivity advantages over other transducer materials such as lithium niobate owing to its high electromechanical efficiency and bias-voltage sensitivity. The transparency of the fabricated transducer was measured ∼67% at 532 nm wavelength with a maximum electromechanical coefficient of ∼0.68 with a DC bias level of 100 V. The photoacoustic impulse response showed a center frequency of ∼27.6 MHz with a −6 dB bandwidth of ∼61% at a DC bias level of 40 V. Results demonstrate that the new transparent transducers hold promise for future optical-ultrasonic and photoacoustic imaging applications.

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