Arama Sonuçları

Listeleniyor 1 - 10 / 21
  • Yayın
    Co-array optimization of CMUT arrays for forward-looking IVUS
    (IEEE, 2009-09) Tekeş, Coşkun; Karaman, Mustafa; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    The ring annular array structure is a preferred configuration for implementing Forward-Looking IVUS (FLIVUS) catheters as it allows for volumetric imaging as well as use of a guidewire at the center. CMUT technology is promising for these arrays especially with the flexibility of locating array elements on the circular donut area efficiently. To take advantage of this flexibility, in this study, we introduce a new co-array sampling strategy that improves imaging performance while keeping the number of firings at a level suitable for real-time imaging. The presented co-array sampling strategy is based on the idea of adjusting the element density of the co-array rings in radial direction to suppress side lobes. In non-uniform sampling of the co-array with a given number of firings, the inter-element distances are adjusted both in radial and angular direction from inner ring to outer ring to fit a given apodization function. To test the imaging performance, we performed numerical simulations of the co-array with non-uniform sampling fitting to the raised-cosine apodization. The simulation results shows that sidelobe level can be reduced more than 10 dB by using non-uniform co-array sampling. This approach does use uniform weighting of all Tx and Rx elements in beamforming, and hence does not cause any SNR loss for apodization.
  • Yayın
    CMUT-based volumetric ultrasonic imaging array design for forward looking ICE and IVUS applications
    (SPIE-Int Soc Optical Engineering, 2013) Tekeş, Coşkun; Zahorian, Jaime S.; Xu, Toby; Rashid, Muhammad Wasequr; Satır, Sarp; Gürün, Gökçe; Karaman, Mustafa; Hasler, Jennifer Olson; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    Designing a mechanically flexible catheter based volumetric ultrasonic imaging device for intravascular and intracardiac imaging is challenging due to small transducer area and limited number of cables. With a few parallel channels, synthetic phased array processing is necessary to acquire data from a large number of transducer elements. This increases the data collection time and hence reduces frame rate and causes artifacts due to tissue-transducer motion. Some of these drawbacks can be resolved by different array designs offered by CMUT-on-CMOS approach. We recently implemented a 2.1-mm diameter single chip 10 MHz dual ring CMUT-on-CMOS array for forward looking ICE with 64-transmit and 56-receive elements along with associated electronics. These volumetric arrays have the small element size required by high operating frequencies and achieve sub mm resolution, but the system would be susceptible to motion artifacts. To enable real time imaging with high SNR, we designed novel arrays consisting of multiple defocused annular rings for transmit aperture and a single ring receive array. The annular transmit rings are utilized to act as a high power element by focusing to a virtual ring shaped line behind the aperture. In this case, image reconstruction is performed by only receive beamforming, reducing total required firing steps from 896 to 14 with a trade-off in image resolution. The SNR of system is improved more than 5 dB for the same frequency and frame rate as compared to the dual ring array, which can be utilized to achieve the same resolution by increasing the operating frequency.
  • Yayın
    Evaluation of CMUT annular arrays for side-looking IVUS
    (IEEE, 2009) Şişman, Alper; Zahorian, Jaime S.; Gürün, Gökçe; Karaman, Mustafa; Balantekin, Müjdat; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent; Hasler, Paul E.
    Side-looking (SL) IVUS probes are extensively used for management of cardiovascular diseases. Currently SL-IVUS imaging probes use either a single rotating transducer element or solid-state arrays. Probes with single rotating piezoelectric transducer have simple front-end, but have fixed focused operation, and suffers from motion artifacts. Solid-state SL-IVUS imaging probes use piezoelectric transducer arrays and electronic beam-forming. Synthetic phased array processing of signals detected with small-sized elements in these arrays limits the SNR achievable with these probes. In this study, we explore a new SL-IVUS probe architecture employing rotating phased annular CMUT arrays. We tested and compared imaging performance of the existing and proposed probe configurations through simulated point spread functions. We also two fabricated sample annular array designs operating at 20-MHz and 50-MHz. Our experimental measurements on the 20-MHz array in oil shows 105% fractional bandwidth. The 50-MHz array with parylene coating shows approximately 40% fractional bandwidth measured in water. We also present imaging results acquired from wire-targets to test the experimental point-spread functions.
  • Yayın
    An Analog beamformer for integrated high-frequency medical ultrasound imaging
    (IEEE, 2011) Gürün, Gökçe; Zahorian, Jaime; Tekeş, Coşkun; Karaman, Mustafa; Hasler, Paul E.; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    We designed and fabricated a dynamic receive beamforming integrated circuit (IC) in 0.35-mu m CMOS technology. This beamformer is suitable for integration with an ultrasound annular array for high-frequency (30-50 MHz) intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging. The beamformer IC is capable of buffering, delaying and preamplification for 8 receive channels. We explored an analog delay cell based on a currentmode first-order all-pass filter, which is used as the basic building block to form an analog dynamic delay line. We also explored a bandwidth enhancement method on the delay cell that improved the overall bandwidth of the delay line by a factor of 6. Each delay cell consumes 2.1 mW of power and is capable of generating a tunable delay between 1.75 ns to 2.5 ns, enabling dynamic receive beamforming over a focal range from 1.4 mm to 2 mm. We successfully integrated the fabricated beamformer IC with an 8-element annular array. Our experimental test results demonstrated the desired buffering, preamplification and delaying capabilities of the beamformer.
  • Yayın
    Optimizing circular ring arrays for forward-looking IVUS imaging
    (IEEE-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc, 2011-12) Tekeş, Coşkun; Karaman, Mustafa; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    Forward-looking (FL) catheter-based imaging systems are highly desirable for guiding interventions in intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) applications. One of the main challenges of array-based FL-IVUS systems is the large channel count, which results in increased system complexity. Synthetic phased-array processing with a reduced firing count simplifies the front-end and, hence, can enable 3-D real-time imaging. Recently, we have investigated dual-ring arrays suitable for IVUS imaging, in which the two concentric circular arrays are used separately as transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) arrays. In this study, we present different optimized array designs based on dual and single circular rings which are suitable for synthetic phased-array processing with a reduced number of firings. To obtain an optimal firing set that produces low side lobes in the wideband response, we use a simulated annealing algorithm. In the simulations, we use 1.2-mm-diameter array configurations with 64 Tx and 58 Rx elements, a center frequency of 20 MHz and fractional bandwidths of 50% and 80%. The results show that optimized dual-ring arrays provide 8 dB improvements in peak near side-lobe level with no widening in the main lobe width when compared with full and other sparse co-arrays.
  • Yayın
    Dual-annular-ring CMUT array for forward-looking IVUS imaging
    (IEEE, 2006) Güldiken, Rasim Oytun; Zahorian, Jaime; Balantekin, Müjdat; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent; Tekeş, Coşkun; Şişman, Alper; Karaman, Mustafa
    We investigate a dual-annular-ring CMUT array configuration for forward-looking intravascular ultrasound (FL-IVUS) imaging. The array consists of separate, concentric transmit and receive ring arrays built on the same silicon substrate. This configuration has the potential for independent optimization of each array and uses the silicon area more effectively without any particular drawback. We designed and fabricated a 1mm diameter test array which consists of 24 transmit and 32 receive elements. We investigated synthetic phased array beamforming with a non-redundant subset (if transmit-receive element pairs of the dual-annular-ring array. For imaging experiments, we designed and constructed a programmable FPGA-based data acquisition and phased array beamforming system. Pulse-echo measurements along with imaging simulations suggest that dual-ring-annular array should provide performance suitable for real-time FLAVUS applications.
  • Yayın
    Experimental study of dual-ring CMUT array optimization for forward-looking IVUS
    (IEEE, 2011) Tekeş, Coşkun; Zahorian, Jaime; Gürün, Gökçe; Satir, Sarp; Hochman, Michael; Xu, Toby; Rashid, Muhammad Wasequr; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent; Karaman, Mustafa
    Forward-looking (FL) catheters have guiding and volumetric imaging capacities which are highly desirable for IVUS applications. Large channel and firing counts have to be reduced to enable 3-D real-time imaging and simplify front-end electronics. Recently, we have proposed an optimization procedure for dual ring FL arrays which is based on finding an optimal coarray set using the simulated annealing algorithm. The presented algorithm is based on finding a predefined number of optimal firing set which results in elimination of redundant spatial frequencies in the coarray. In this study, we present the experimental demonstration of the proposed method with fabricated single chip CMUT on CMOS system based FL dual ring arrays. The dual ring CMUT arrays were monolithically fabricated on top of CMOS chips which have 25-V pulsers and low-noise transimpedance amplifiers for each transmit and receive array elements. The fabricated CMUT arrays have 56 transmit and 48 receive elements operating at 12 MHz with a 1.4 mm outer diameter. To test the imaging performance of the optimal reduced set, we obtained a 512-element coarray set from the full 2688-element set. In the experiment, we used a phantom of 100-mu m aluminium wires immersed in oil tank. We have reconstructed both 2-D PSFs and B-scan images of wire targets. Experimental results demonstrate that the simulated annealing based optimal firing set achieves acceptable lateral and contrast resolution performances with 1/5 of the full set.
  • Yayın
    Monolithic CMUT-on-CMOS integration for intravascular ultrasound applications
    (IEEE-INST Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc, 2011-12) Zahorian, Jaime S.; Hochman, Michael; Xu, Toby; Satır, Sarp; Gürün, Gökçe; Karaman, Mustafa; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    One of the most important promises of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) technology is integration with electronics. This approach is required to minimize the parasitic capacitances in the receive mode, especially in catheter-based volumetric imaging arrays, for which the elements must be small. Furthermore, optimization of the available silicon area and minimized number of connections occurs when the CMUTs are fabricated directly above the associated electronics. Here, we describe successful fabrication and performance evaluation of CMUT arrays for intravascular imaging on custom-designed CMOS receiver electronics from a commercial IC foundry. The CMUT-on-CMOS process starts with surface isolation and mechanical planarization of the CMOS electronics to reduce topography. The rest of the CMUT fabrication is achieved by modifying a low-temperature micromachining process through the addition of a single mask and developing a dry etching step to produce sloped sidewalls for simple and reliable CMUT-to-CMOS interconnection. This CMUT-to-CMOS interconnect method reduced the parasitic capacitance by a factor of 200 when compared with a standard wire-bonding method. Characterization experiments indicate that the CMUT-on-CMOS elements are uniform in frequency response and are similar to CMUTs simultaneously fabricated on standard silicon wafers without electronics integration. Experiments on a 1.6-mm-diameter dual-ring CMUT array with a center frequency of 15 MHz show that both the CMUTs and the integrated CMOS electronics are fully functional. The SNR measurements indicate that the performance is adequate for imaging chronic total occlusions located 1 cm from the CMUT array.
  • Yayın
    Forward-looking IVUS imaging using a dual-annular ring CMUT array: Experimental results
    (IEEE, 2007) Güldiken, Rasim Oytun; Zahorian, Jaime S.; Gürün, Gökçe; Qureshi, Muhammad Shakeel; Balantekin, Müjdat; Tekeş, Coşkun; Hasler, Paul E.; Karaman, Mustafa; Carlier, Stephane; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    This paper presents the experimental results on forward-looking Intravascular ultrasound (FL-IVUS) using dual-annular-ring CMUT arrays. The array has a diameter of 1mm including bondpads which consists of separate, concentric 24 transmit and 32 receive ring arrays built on the same silicon substrate. This configuration has the potential for Independent optimization of each array and uses the silicon area more effectively without any drawback. For imaging experiments, we designed and constructed a custom integrated circuit using a standard 0.5 mu m CMOS process for data acquisition. A sample pulse-echo signal received from the oil-air Interface (plane reflector) at 6mm had a center frequency of 11MHz with 95% fractional 6-dB bandwidth. The measured SNR of the echo was 24 dB with no averaging. B-scan image of a wire-phantom was generated to test the resolution.
  • Yayın
    Annular CMUT arrays for side looking intravascular ultrasound imaging
    (IEEE, 2007) Zahorian, Jaime; Güldiken, Rasim Oytun; Gürün, Gökçe; Qureshi, Muhammad Shakeel; Balantekin, Müjdat; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent; Carlier, Stephane; Şişman, Alper; Karaman, Mustafa
    Although side looking intravascular ultrasound (SL-IVUS) imaging systems using single element piezoelectric transducers set the resolution standard in the assessment of the extent of coronary artery disease, improvements in transducer performance are needed to perform harmonic imaging and high resolution imaging of vulnerable plaque. With their small channel count; annular arrays exploiting the inherent broad bandwidth of CMUTs and electronic focusing capability of integrated electronics provide a path for desired SL-IVUS imaging catheters. In this paper, we first describe the design, low temperature fabrication of an 8401 mu m diameter, 8 element CMUT annular array. Testing of the individual elements in oil shows a uniform device behavior with 100% fractional bandwidth around 20MHz without including the effects of attenuation and diffraction. We also present linear scan imaging results obtained on wire targets in oil, tissue and tissue mimicking phantoms using both unfocused and dynamically focused transducers. The results for axial and lateral resolution are in agreement predicted by the simulations and show the feasibility of this approach for high resolution SL-IVUS imaging.