Integrated circuit technologies have had a great impact on the development of medical devices. Diagnostic imaging systems have benefited tremendously from the improvements in integrated circuits. One of the recent examples of this interaction between the two disciplines occurred in the area of ultrasonic imaging. The ability to build structures with dimensions in the submicron range enabled the realization of an almost a century old idea: Capacitive ultrasonic transducers. The major advantages of this transducer technology are ease of fabrication, potential for integration with supporting electronic circuits and improved bandwidth and sensitivity.; This dissertation analyzes the viability of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) for practical imaging applications. This analysis is conducted by a detailed characterization effort, and by demonstrating both 2-D and 3-D images. Acoustical performance of 1-D and 2-D CMUT arrays fabricated using silicon integrated circuit technology has been experimentally characterized for transmit and receive modes, and the results are found to be in good agreement with the theoretical expectations. Both 2-D and 3-D images have been demonstrated. The distinctive features of CMUTs manifest themselves in the results of the characterization experiments and also in the resulting images.; This dissertation also describes a general approach to design integrated front-end circuits for ultrasonic imaging and demonstrates basic circuit blocks for use in integrated systems along with CMUT arrays. The integration of the ultrasonic transducer arrays with supporting electronics not only reduces the cost and complexity of the system but also provides several advantages such as reduced parasitics, improved sensitivity, and a compact design with a reduced number of external interconnects. In this study, a custom integrated circuit comprising a pulse driver, a transmit/receive (T/R) switch and a wideband preamplifier has been fabricated in a 0.25-mum CMOS process and wire-bonded to a 320-mum x 320-mum CMUT for pulse-echo operation. Preliminary results on this system have shown that placing the T/R electronics close to the transducer improves the sensitivity and preserves the wide bandwidth of CMUTs.; The results obtained in this research indicate that CMUT technology has the potential to be the next-generation transducer technology for future ultrasonic imaging systems.
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