A 1.11 mm2 IVUS SoC with ±50°-Range Plane Wave Transmit Beamforming at 40 MHz.

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging catheters are significant tools for cardiovascular interventions, and their use can be expanded by realizing IVUS imaging guidewires and microcatheters. The miniaturization of these devices creates challenges in SNR due to the need for higher frequencies to provide adequate resolution. An integrated IVUS system with transmit beamforming can mitigate these limitations. This work presents the first practical highly integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) with plane wave transmit beamforming at 40 MHz for IVUS on guidewire or microcatheters. The front-end circuitry has a 20-channel ultrasound transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) array interfaced with a capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) array. During each firing, all 20 Tx are excited with the same analog delay with respect to each other, which can be continuously adjusted between ~0 and 10 ns in two directions, generating a steerable plane wave in a range of ±/-50° for a phased array at 40 MHz. The unit delays are generated via a voltage-controlled delay line (VCDL), which only needs two external controls, one tuning the unit delay and the other determining the steering direction. The SoC is fabricated using a 180-nm high-voltage (HV) CMOS process and features a slender active area of 0.3 mm × 3.7 mm. The proposed SoC consumes 31.3 mW during the receiving mode. The beamformer's functionality and the SoC's overall performance were validated through acoustic characterization and imaging experiments.

An Adaptive Element-Level Impedance-Matched ASIC With Improved Acoustic Reflectivity for Medical Ultrasound Imaging.

This paper presents an active impedance matching scheme that tries to optimize electrical power transfer and acoustic reflectivity in ultrasound transducers. Leveraging negative capacitance-based impedance matching would potentially improve the bandwidth and electrical power transfer while minimizing acoustic reflection of transducer elements and improve uniformity while reducing acoustic crosstalk of transducer arrays. A 16-element transceiver front-end is designed which employs an element-level active capacitive impedance cancellation scheme using an element-level negative impedance converter. The ASIC fabricated in 180-nm HVBCD technology provides high-voltage pulses up to 60 V consuming 3.6 mW and occupying 2.5 mm2. The front-end ASIC is used with a 1-D capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array and its acoustical reflectivity reduction and imaging capabilities have successfully been demonstrated through pulse-echo measurements and acoustic imaging experiments.

Analysis of Negative Capacitance-Based Broadband Impedance Matching for CMUTs.

Tight integration of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays with integrated circuits can make active impedance matching feasible for practical imaging devices. In this article, negative capacitance-based impedance matching for CMUTs is investigated. Simple equivalent circuit model-based calculations show the potential of negative capacitance matching for improving the bandwidth along with electrical power transfer and acoustic reflectivity, but the model has limitations especially for acoustic reflectivity evaluation. For more realistic results, an experimentally validated CMUT array model is applied to a small 1-D CMUT array operating in the 5-15 MHz range. The results highlight the difference between electrical power transfer and acoustic reflectivity as well as the tradeoffs in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). According to the results, ideal negative capacitance termination matched to the CMUT capacitance provides the broadest bandwidth and highest SNR if acoustic or electrical reflections are of no concern. On the other hand, negative capacitance and resistance matching to minimize acoustic reflectivity provides both lower reflection and closer to ideal SNR as compared with electrical power matching. It is observed that acoustic matching also reduces acoustic crosstalk and improves array uniformity. While several challenges for integrated circuit implementation are present, negative capacitance-based impedance matching can be a viable broadband active impedance matching method for CMUTs operating in conventional and collapsed mode as well as other ultrasound transducers with mainly capacitive impedance.

Highly Integrated Guidewire Ultrasound Imaging System-on-a-Chip.

In this article, we present a highly integrated guidewire ultrasound (US) imaging system-on-a-chip (GUISoC) for vascular imaging. The SoC consists of a 16-channel US transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) electronics, on-chip power management IC (PMIC), and quadrature sampler. Using a synthetic aperture imaging algorithm, a Tx/Rx pair, connected to capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs), can be activated at any time. The Tx generates acoustic waves by driving the CMUT, while the Rx picks up the echo signal and amplify it to be delivered through an interconnect that is driven by a buffer. On-chip logic controls the pulsers that generate the high-voltage (HV)-pulse for Tx. An on-chip PMIC provides 1.8-, 5-, 39-, and 44-V supplies and a clock signal from the two interconnects besides GND. A quadrature sampler down-converts the Rx echo signal to baseband, reducing its bandwidth requirement for the output interconnect. The system design, including transimpedance amplifier (TIA) optimization, based on the equivalent circuit of a specific CMUT is presented. The SoC was fabricated by a 0.18-µm HV CMOS process, occupying 1.5-mm2 active area and consuming 25.2 and 44 mW from 1.8 to 44 V supplies, respectively. The US Tx and Rx show bandwidths of 32-42 and 32.7-37.5 MHz, respectively. The input-referred noise of the system was measured as 9.66 nA in band with 2-m-long 52 American Wire Gauge (AWG) wire interconnects. The functionality of the GUISoC was verified in vitro by imaging wire targets.

Toward a reduced-wire readout system for ultrasound imaging.

We present a system-on-a-chip (SoC) for use in high-frequency capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) imaging systems. This SoC consists of trans-impedance amplifiers (TIA), delay locked loop (DLL) based clock multiplier, quadrature sampler, and pulse width modulator (PWM). The SoC down converts RF echo signal to baseband by quadrature sampling which facilitates modulation. To send data through a 1.6 m wire in the catheter which has limited bandwidth and is vulnerable to noise, the SoC creates a pseudo-digital PWM signal which can be used for back telemetry or wireless readout of the RF data. In this implementation, using a 0.35-µm std. CMOS process, the TIA and single-to-differential (STD) converter had 45 MHz bandwidth, the quadrature sampler had 10.1 dB conversion gain, and the PWM had 5-bit ENoB. Preliminary results verified front-end functionality, and the power consumption of a TIA, STD, quadrature sampler, PWM, and clock multiplier was 26 mW from a 3 V supply.