A front-end integrated circuit for a 2D capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) array for a noninvasive neural interface to the retina

摘要

A recent study showed that focused ultrasound can noninvasively create neural response in the retina in a similar way to light stimulus. To implement such functionality, we developed an algorithm for a 2D transducer array to project an image to the retina as an ultrasound field pattern (USFP) in a previous study. In this work, we report a front-end integrated circuit (IC) for a 2D CMUT array that realizes a USFP with quantized phases and amplitudes. In addition, we evaluated the projected image quality with Field II simulations considering non-linearity in phases extracted from a fabricated prototype chip.