The Role of Additive Manufacturing Technology in the Design of Sparse Transducer Arrays

Martínez-Graullera, Óscar; Yagüe-Jiménez, Virginia; Paetsch, Adrián Blanco; Rodríguez, Alberto Ibáñez; Álvarez-Arenas, Tomás Gómez

doi:10.1109/ultsym.2019.8925591

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In this paper, we have shown that the number of active elements of the spiral arrays can be further reduced by the proposed design rule when necessary. The SSA pairs, which have advantages of lower PGL and narrower BW compared to the SRA pairs, may find increasing application as a cost-effective method of manufacturing spiral arrays has recently been reported [23].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sparse Rectangular and Spiral Array Designs for 3D Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Yoon

Song

2019

Sensors

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In three-dimensional (3D) medical ultrasound imaging with two-dimensional (2D) arrays, sparse 2D arrays have been studied to reduce the number of active channels. Among them, sparse 2D arrays with regular or uniform arrangements of elements have advantages of low side lobe energy and uniform field responses over the entire field of view. This paper presents two uniform sparse array models: sparse rectangular arrays (SRAs) on a rectangular grid and sparse spiral arrays (SSAs) on a sunflower grid. Both arrays can be easily implemented on the commercially available or the custom-made arrays. To suppress the overall grating lobe levels, the transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) array pairs of both the array models are designed not to have grating lobes at the same locations in the Tx/Rx beam patterns, for which the theoretical design rules are also proposed. Computer simulation results indicate that the proposed array pairs for both the SRAs and the SSAs achieve peak grating lobe levels below –40 dB using about a quarter of the number of elements in the dense rectangular array while maintaining similar beam widths to that of the dense array pair.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sparse Rectangular and Spiral Array Designs for 3D Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Yoon

Song

2019

Sensors

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“…There are not many works describing in detail the design and construction of 2-D array transducers for underwater purposes, with non-destructive testing (NDT) and medical applications being the most commonly found [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. There is thus a lack of information about the type of piezoceramics, matching layer, backing layer, and construction process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another approach design for reducing the number of elements in a 2-D array transducer while maintaining the wide aperture to improve the lateral resolution is the Fermat spiral [ 7 , 18 ]. The Fermat spiral distributes the elements in a spiral arrangement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [ 18 ] 2-D arrays with Fermat spiral distribution, with 128 and 256 elements in apertures with diameters of 40 λ, 50 λ, and 60 λ, were simulated. In [ 7 ] a 2-D array transducer with 64 elements disposed into a Fermat spiral was manufactured by an additive process, using a 3-D printer and a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The aperture was designed to have a diameter of 48 λ.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of a 2-D Array Ultrasonic Transducer for 3-D Imaging of Objects Immersed in Water

Rodrigues

Oliveira

Matuda

et al. 2021

Sensors

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Most works that address 2-D array ultrasonic transducers for underwater applications are about the geometry aspects of the array and beamforming techniques to make 3-D images. They look for techniques to reduce the number of elements from wide apertures, maintaining the side lobes and the grating lobes at acceptable levels, but not many details about the materials and fabrication processes are described. To overcome these gaps, this paper presents in detail the development of a 2-D array ultrasonic transducer prototype that can individually emit and receive ultrasonic pulses to make 3-D images of immersed reflectors within a volume of interest (VOI). It consists of a 4 × 4 matrix ultrasonic transducer with a central frequency of 480 kHz. Each element is a 5 mm sided square cut into a 1–3 piezocomposite. The center-to-center distance of two contiguous elements (pitch) was chosen to be greater than half wavelength, to increase the amplitude of emission and reception of signals with larger elements. Artifacts generated by grating lobes were avoided by restricting the field of view in the azimuth and elevation directions within 40° × 40° and applying the sign coherence factor (SCF) filter. Two types of backing layer materials were tested, one with air and another made of epoxy resin, on the transducers called T1 and T2, respectively. The pulse echoes measured with T1 had 2.6 dB higher amplitude than those measured with T2, and the bandwidths were 54% and 50% @ −6 dB, respectively, exciting the element with a single rectangular negative pulse. The 3-D images obtained with full matrix capture (FMC) data sets acquired of objects from 0.2 to 1.15 m motivate the development of a 2-D array transducer with more elements, to increase the angular resolution and the range.

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The Role of Additive Manufacturing Technology in the Design of Sparse Transducer Arrays

Cited by 2 publications

References 4 publications

Sparse Rectangular and Spiral Array Designs for 3D Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Sparse Rectangular and Spiral Array Designs for 3D Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Development of a 2-D Array Ultrasonic Transducer for 3-D Imaging of Objects Immersed in Water

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