2-D Ultrasound Scanning Probes for 3-D Medical Diagnostic Imaging

摘要

Three dimensional (3-D) medical diagnostic imaging appears to be one of the major technical advancements of this decade. It is being pursued vigorously by the industry and is technologically feasible. However, cost versus performance issues are currently extremely sensitive and holding back commercialization of a number of 3-D technical concepts. Our technical approach will allow commercialization of a thoroughly needed 2-dimensional acquisition system (2-D probes and controller modules), which are uniformly recognized as a critical part of a 3-dimensional ultrasound imaging system. Any commercially viable system has an architecture driven primarily by cost and performance Issues. 2-D phased and linear arrays would certainly meet the performance requirements should the major technological obstacles be surmounted. A large number of research papers were devoted to resolve such issues (e.g. 1,2,3,4), however the cost and considerations for such arrays, with thousands of elements to interconnect and drive, have not been resolved to date. In this project we have shown the feasibility of achieving a balance between cost and performance for 2-D probes by the means of utilizing electronic arrays and integrated control modules, with a mechanically driven, compact 2-D imaging probe (see Fig 1).