A Prototype System With Custom-Designed RX ICs for Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Imaging.
IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control
; 69(5): 1649-1660, 2022 05.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35316183
ABSTRACT
This work presents a prototype system based on a multichannel receiving (RX) integrated circuit (IC) for contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging. The RX IC is implemented in a 40-nm low-voltage CMOS technology and is designed to interface to a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer array. To enable a direct connection of the RX electronics to the transducer, an analog multiplexer with on-chip protection circuitry is developed. Stress tests confirm the reliability of this arrangement when combined with a high-voltage pulser. The RX IC is equipped with a highly programmable bandpass filter to capture harmonic signals from ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs) while suppressing fundamental components. In order to examine the impact of analog front-end (AFE) bandpass filtering, in vitro acoustic experiments are performed with UCAs. A spatial resolution analysis suggests that the AFE bandpass filtering combined with a pulse inversion (PI) technique can improve the lateral resolution by 38% or 9% compared to the original full-bandwidth approach or a stand-alone PI approach, respectively, while the impact on axial resolution is negligible. A phantom study shows that compared to digital bandpass filtering, the AFE bandpass filtering enables better use of the dynamic range of the RX electronics, resulting in better generalized contrast-to-noise ratio from 0.44/0.53 to 0.57/0.68 without or with PI.
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1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Transductores
Tipo de estudio:
Diagnostic_studies
Idioma:
En
Revista:
IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control
Asunto de la revista:
MEDICINA NUCLEAR
Año:
2022
Tipo del documento:
Article