Integrated circuit arrangement for a hexagonal CMUT ultrasound transducer array with offset columns

摘要

The present invention relates to an integrated circuit arrangement comprising: —a plurality of capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) cells (40) arranged in a hexagonal array, wherein said hexagonal array comprises a plurality of alternating even and odd columns (56, 56′) of CMUT cells (40) being parallel to a column direction (y), wherein the odd columns (56′) are arranged offset to the even columns (56) by one-half of a dimension of a CMUT cell (40) in said column direction (y), —an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) (52) comprising a plurality of transmit-receive (TR) cells (54), wherein each CMUT cell (40) overlays a respective TR cell (54) in a one-to-one correspondence, wherein the ASIC (52) further comprises an offset regulator (60) for providing different beamforming delays to even and odd columns (56, 56′) of the hexagonal array of CMUT cells (40) to account for the offset in the column direction (y).