Arama Sonuçları

Listeleniyor 1 - 10 / 12
  • 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
    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.
  • Yayın
    Front-end CMOS electronics for monolithic integration with CMUT arrays: Circuit design and initial experimental results
    (2008) Gürün, Gökçe; Qureshi, Muhammad Shakeel; Balantekin, Müjdat; Güldiken, Rasim Oytun; Zahorian, Jaime S.; Peng, Shengyu; Basu, Arindam; Karaman, Mustafa; Hasler, Paul E.; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    This paper discusses design of CMOS-ASICs for monolithic integration of CMUT arrays by post-CMOS fabrication. We describe design strategies for monolithic integration and demonstrate the advantages of CMUT-on-CMOS approach. On the same wafer, separate sets of IC cells are designed to interface different types of CMUT arrays for IVUS and ICE applications. Circuit topologies include resistive feedback transimpedance amplifiers on the receiver side, along with multiplexers and buffers. Gains and bandwidths of receiving amplifiers are optimized separately to fit different array specifications such as number of elements, element size and operation bandwidth. To drive CMUTs a high voltage pulser array is designed in the same 3.3V unmodified CMOS technology by combining existing technological layers in an unconventional way. CMUT arrays are then built on top of the custom made 8" wafer containing these circuits fabricated in a 0.35µm standard CMOS process. We present initial characterization of the CMO electronics and pulse-echo measurements obtained post-CMOS fabricated CMUT elements.
  • Yayın
    Solid-state SL-IVUS arrays based on non-uniform aperture sampling
    (IEEE, 2010) Şişman, Alper; Karaman, Mustafa; Gürün, Gökçe; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    We propose new reconfigurable ring and cylindrical array designs using non-uniform (Fresnel) aperture sampling with identical differential delays between adjacent elements which reduces the beamformer complexity. For side-looking intravascular ultrasound (SL-IVUS), the image plane is scanned through stepping the active subarray which is reformed in each step. A ring array with such sampling leads to a simplified phased array beamformer with N/2 identical differential delays. The same logic applies to a two-dimensional (2-D) array with NLNE-elements over a cylindrical patch. The 2-D beamformer becomes separable along the elevation and the lateral dimensions and possesses the delay symmetry in both dimensions. Consequently, the overall phased array beamforming can be realized by using NL elevational parallel beamformers each with (NE/2)-channel and the output of which is fed to a (NL/2)-channel lateral beamformer. We tested and compared the proposed and existing array designs through numerical PSF simulations.
  • Yayın
    A tunable analog delay element for high-frequency dynamic beamforming
    (IEEE, 2009) Gürün, Gökçe; Şişman, Alper; Zahorian, Jaime S.; Satır, Sarp; Karaman, Mustafa; Hasler, Paul E.; Değertekin, Fahrettin Levent
    Implementing beamforming for high frequency arrays is challenging because of the accurate delay requirements at high frequencies. High frequency digital beamforming is not suitable for catheter based applications as a large number of cables is required between the array and the external beamformer. A possible solution is to perform analog beamforming on an integrated circuit adjacent or monolithically integrated to the imaging array. In this study, we introduce an improved voltage in voltage out low pass filter as an analog delay cell for high frequency dynamic beamformers. This circuit can generate three times more delay with a given bandwidth when compared to conventional low pass filters. Delay of the circuit is tunable and the gain of the cell is inherently very close to unity. The proposed delay cell operates single ended and therefore is more suitable for CMUT operation which generates single ended output. We designed a test beamformer for a 30MHz, equal area, annular array with 100% bandwidth using the proposed delay cell and the unit-delay focusing architecture. Required delays are implemented using a delay line made up of improved delay elements with tunable delays. To demonstrate functionality we designed and fabricated a custom front-end IC in a 0.5µm standard CMOS process. The IC chip consists of 8 transimpedance amplifiers, voltage-to-current converters, the analog dynamic beamformer, and two buffers. We present results of preliminary imaging experiments that demonstrate the focusing capability.