Electronic Instrumentation Lab, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2012 Jul;59(7):1500-12. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2012.2350.
There is a clear clinical need for creating 3-D images of the heart. One promising technique is the use of transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). To enable 3-D TEE, we are developing a miniature ultrasound probe containing a matrix piezoelectric transducer with more than 2000 elements. Because a gastroscopic tube cannot accommodate the cables needed to connect all transducer elements directly to an imaging system, a major challenge is to locally reduce the number of channels, while maintaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. This can be achieved by using front-end receiver electronics bonded to the transducers to provide appropriate signal conditioning in the tip of the probe. This paper presents the design of such electronics, realizing time-gain compensation (TGC) and micro-beamforming using simple, low-power circuits. Prototypes of TGC amplifiers and micro-beamforming cells have been fabricated in 0.35-μm CMOS technology. These prototype chips have been combined on a printed circuit board (PCB) to form an ultrasound-receiver system capable of reading and combining the signals of three transducer elements. Experimental results show that this design is a suitable candidate for 3-D TEE.
临床对创建心脏 3D 图像有明确的需求。一种很有前途的技术是使用经食管超声心动图（TEE）。为了实现 3D TEE，我们正在开发一种包含矩阵压电换能器的微型超声探头，该换能器具有超过 2000 个元件。由于胃镜管无法容纳将所有换能器元件直接连接到成像系统所需的电缆，因此主要的挑战是局部减少通道数量，同时保持足够的信噪比。这可以通过使用连接到换能器的前端接收电子设备来实现，在探头的尖端提供适当的信号调理。本文介绍了这种电子设备的设计，使用简单、低功耗的电路实现了时间增益补偿（TGC）和微波束形成。已经在 0.35-μm CMOS 技术中制造了 TGC 放大器和微波束形成单元的原型。这些原型芯片已组合在印刷电路板（PCB）上，形成了一个能够读取和组合三个换能器元件信号的超声接收器系统。实验结果表明，这种设计是 3D TEE 的一个合适候选方案。
