PE-CMOS based C-scan ultrasound for foreign object detection in soft tissue

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a C-scan ultrasound prototype and three imaging modalities for the detection of foreign objects inserted in porcine soft tissue. The object materials include bamboo, plastics, glass and aluminum alloys. The images of foreign objects were acquired using the C-scan ultrasound, a portable B-scan ultrasound, film-based radiography, and computerized radiography. The C-scan ultrasound consists of a plane wave transducer, a compound acoustic lens system, and a newly developed ultrasound sensor array based on the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor coated with piezoelectric material (PE-CMOS). The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the images were analyzed to quantitatively evaluate the detectability using different imaging modalities. The experimental results indicate that the C-scan prototype has better CNR values in 4 out of 7 objects than other modalities. Specifically, the C-scan prototype provides more detail information of the soft tissues without the speckle artifacts that are commonly seen with conventional B-scan ultrasound, and has the same orientation as the standard radiographs but without ionizing radiation.