Experimental System Prototype of a Portable, Low-Cost, C-Scan Ultrasound Imaging Device

Abstract

A system prototype of a future compact, low-cost medical ultrasound device is described and presented with experimental results. The prototype system consists of a 32 x 32 element, fully sampled 2-D transducer array and a printed circuit board (PCB) containing 16 custom "front-end" receive channel integrated circuits (ICs) with analog multiplexing and programmable logic. A PC that included a commercially available data acquisition card is used for data collection and analysis. Beamforming is performed offline using the direct sampled in-phase/quadrature (DSIQ) algorithm. Pulse-echo images obtained with the prototype are presented. Results from this prototype support the feasibility of a low-cost, pocket-sized, C-scan imaging device.

In Vivo Demonstration of Photoacoustic Image Guidance and Robotic Visual Servoing for Cardiac Catheter-Based Interventions

“…In order to advance the proposed approach to clinical utility in an interventional suite, three key modifications would be required. First, due to space constraints, technologies such as table-or body-mounted robots [48]- [53] and wireless ultrasound probes [54]- [56], as well as miniaturized light delivery systems [31] would help to free the floor space that is currently required for our prototype system. These technologies would also assist with limiting the number of currently required wired connections between system components.…”

Compressed Sensing for RF Signal Reconstruction in B-model Ultrasound Imaging

“…The key point of CS is the assumption of the signal has a sparse representation in some basis < ,so ) m n x s < (2) s is the coefficient for x in transform domain and have S non-zero entries( ) or compressible . finally the problem can be written as follows:…”

“…Compared with other imaging modalities, Ultrasonography is safe and low cost [1], moreover, it can produce real time images and the scanner can be fabricated to portable products, this is important for some application, i.e., in the battlefield [2]. However, the amount of data still be a limitation factor for real time imaging, especial for 3D volume imaging with 2D array transducer-the amount of data is enormous.…”

System-Level Design of an Integrated Receiver Front End for a Wireless Ultrasound Probe

“…Fuller et al [5], [6] developed a low-cost, pocketsized device for medical ultrasound imaging that integrates a fully sampled 2D array transducer, transmit/receive circuitry, a LCD display and a battery in a very compact enclosure.…”