Ultrasound System Hardware Laboratory and Department of Medical IT Convergence Engineering, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, 350-27 Gumi-Daero, Gumi, Gyeongbuk 35029, Republic of Korea.
IMP System, 301-3ho 267-96 Gongdan2-dong, Gumi, Gyeongbuk 39373, Republic of Korea.
J Healthc Eng. 2017;2017:6580217. doi: 10.1155/2017/6580217. Epub 2017 Dec 22.
In medical ultrasound transducers, the transmission mode (pass-through) approach has been used to estimate the characteristics of the acoustic lens. However, it is difficult to measure the acoustic lens properties with high precision because of human, systemic, or mechanical measurement errors. In this paper, we propose a low-cost estimation instrument for acoustic lens properties connected with a customized database. In the instrument, three-axis and one-axis transmitting and material fixtures accurately align the transmitting and receiving transducers separately. Through the developed instrument, we obtained a precise standard deviation of the attenuation coefficient and velocity of the acoustic lens material of 0.05 dB/cm and 2.62 m/s, respectively. Additionally, the simultaneous alignment between the fixtures is controllable with developed programs, thus generating very accurate information of the acoustic lens about the testing ultrasound transducer. In our instrument, the database could support users in managing the result data efficiently. User programs developed using LabVIEW provide the capability to obtain precise values of the attenuation coefficient and velocity, which represent the fundamental material characteristics of the acoustic lens of the medical ultrasound transducers. The developed review program of the customized database can also search the acoustic lens information and store the experimental results.
在医学超声换能器中，已经使用传输模式（直通）方法来估计声透镜的特性。然而，由于人为、系统或机械测量误差，很难高精度地测量声透镜特性。在本文中，我们提出了一种低成本的声透镜特性估计仪器，该仪器与定制数据库相连。在该仪器中，三轴和单轴传输夹具分别精确对准发射和接收换能器。通过开发的仪器，我们获得了声透镜材料衰减系数和速度的精确标准差，分别为 0.05 dB/cm 和 2.62 m/s。此外，夹具之间的同步对准可以通过开发的程序进行控制，从而生成关于测试超声换能器的声透镜非常准确的信息。在我们的仪器中，数据库可以支持用户高效地管理结果数据。使用 LabVIEW 开发的用户程序提供了获取衰减系数和速度精确值的功能，这些值代表了医学超声换能器声透镜的基本材料特性。定制数据库的开发审查程序还可以搜索声透镜信息并存储实验结果。
