Integrated Hybrid Sub-Aperture Beamforming and Time-Division Multiplexing for Massive Readout in Ultrasound Imaging.

This paper demonstrates hybrid sub-aperture beamforming (SAB) with time-division multiplexing (TDM) for massive interconnect reduction in ultrasound imaging systems. A single-chip front-end system prototype has been fabricated in 180-nm HV BCD technology that combines 5×1 SAB with 8×1 TDM to efficiently reduce the number of receive signal interconnects by a factor of 40. The system includes on-chip high-voltage (HV) pulsers capable of generating unipolar pulses up to 70 V in transmit (TX) mode. The receiver (RX) chain consists of a T/R switch, a variable-gain low-noise amplifier (VG-LNA) with 4-step gain control (15-32 dB) for time-gain compensation followed by a programmable switched-capacitor analog delay-and-sum beamformer. The proof-of-concept prototype operates at a 200-MHz clock frequency and the SAB provides 32-step fine delays with a maximum delay of 310 ns corresponding to better than λ/20 delay quantization at 5 MHz. With these specifications, the SAB is capable of beam steering from 0 ° to 45 ° for a 5-element subarray with 150-micron pitch ( λ/2), providing a near-ideal phased array imaging performance. The sub-aperture beamformer is followed by the TDM system where each of the 8 channels is sampled at a rate of 25 MS/s after an anti-aliasing bandpass filter. The full functionality of the prototype chip is validated through electrical and acoustic measurements on a 1-D capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array designed for intracardiac echocardiography (ICE).

High-Power Gallium Nitride HIFU Transmitter With Integrated Real-Time Current and Voltage Measurement.

High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) therapy provides a non-invasive technique with which to destroy cancerous tissue without using ionizing radiation. To drive large single-element High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) transducers, ultrasound transmitters capable of delivering high powers at relevant frequencies are required. The acoustic power delivered to a transducers focal region will determine the treated area, and due to safety concerns and intervening layers of attenuation, control of this output power is critical. A typical setup involves large inefficient linear power amplifiers to drive the transducer. Switched mode transmitters allow for a more compact drive system with higher efficiencies, with multi-level transmitters allowing control over the output power. Real-time monitoring of power delivered can avoid damage to the transducer and injury to patients due to over treatment, and allow for precise control over the output power. This study demonstrates a transformer-less, high power, switched mode transmit transmitter based on Gallium-Nitride (GaN) transistors that is capable of delivering peak powers up to 1.8 kW at up to 600 Vpp, while operating at frequencies from DC to 5 MHz. The design includes a 12 b 16 MHz floating Current/Voltage (IV) measurement circuit to allow real-time high-side monitoring of the power delivered to the transducer allowing use with multi-element transducers.

High-Frame-Rate Contrast-Enhanced Echocardiography Using Diverging Waves: 2-D Motion Estimation and Compensation.

Combining diverging ultrasound waves and microbubbles could improve contrast-enhanced echocardiography (CEE), by providing enhanced temporal resolution for cardiac function assessment over a large imaging field of view. However, current image formation techniques using coherent summation of echoes from multiple steered diverging waves (DWs) are susceptible to tissue and microbubble motion artifacts, resulting in poor image quality. In this study, we used correlation-based 2-D motion estimation to perform motion compensation for CEE using DWs. The accuracy of this motion estimation method was evaluated with Field II simulations. The root-mean-square velocity errors were 5.9% ± 0.2% and 19.5% ± 0.4% in the axial and lateral directions, when normalized to the maximum value of 62.8 cm/s which is comparable to the highest speed of blood flow in the left ventricle (LV). The effects of this method on image contrast ratio (CR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were tested in vitro using a tissue mimicking rotating disk with a diameter of 10 cm. Compared against the control without motion compensation, a mean increase of 12 dB in CR and 7 dB in CNR were demonstrated when using this motion compensation method. The motion correction algorithm was tested in vivo on a CEE data set acquired with the Ultrasound Array Research Platform II performing coherent DW imaging. Improvement of the B-mode and contrast-mode image quality with cardiac motion and blood flow-induced microbubble motion was achieved. The results of motion estimation were further processed to interpret blood flow in the LV. This allowed for a triplex cardiac imaging technique, consisting of B mode, contrast mode, and 2-D vector flow imaging with a high frame rate of 250 Hz.

Combining Acoustic Trapping With Plane Wave Imaging for Localized Microbubble Accumulation in Large Vessels.

The capability of accumulating microbubbles using ultrasound could be beneficial for enhancing targeted drug delivery. When microbubbles are used to deliver a therapeutic payload, there is a need to track them, for a localized release of the payload. In this paper, a method for localizing microbubble accumulation with fast image guidance is presented. A linear array transducer performed trapping of microbubble populations interleaved with plane wave imaging, through the use of a composite pulse sequence. The acoustic trap in the pressure field was created parallel with the direction of flow in a model of a vessel section. The acoustic trapping force resultant from the large gradients in the acoustic field was engendered to directly oppose the flowing microbubbles. This was demonstrated numerically with field simulations, and experimentally using an Ultrasound Array Research Platform II. SonoVue microbubbles at clinically relevant concentrations were pumped through a tissue-mimicking flow phantom and exposed to either the acoustic trap or a control ultrasonic field composed of a single-peak acoustic radiation force beam. Under the flow condition at a shear rate of 433 s-1, the use of the acoustic trap led to lower speed estimations ( ) in the center of the acoustic field, and an enhancement of 71% ± 28%( ) in microbubble image brightness.

Direct Digital Demultiplexing of Analog TDM Signals for Cable Reduction in Ultrasound Imaging Catheters.

In real-time catheter-based 3-D ultrasound imaging applications, gathering data from the transducer arrays is difficult, as there is a restriction on cable count due to the diameter of the catheter. Although area and power hungry multiplexing circuits integrated at the catheter tip are used in some applications, these are unsuitable for use in small sized catheters for applications, such as intracardiac imaging. Furthermore, the length requirement for catheters and limited power available to on-chip cable drivers leads to limited signal strength at the receiver end. In this paper, an alternative approach using analog time-division multiplexing (TDM) is presented, which addresses the cable restrictions of ultrasound catheters. A novel digital demultiplexing technique is also described, which allows for a reduction in the number of analog signal processing stages required. The TDM and digital demultiplexing schemes are demonstrated for an intracardiac imaging system that would operate in the 4- to 11-MHz range. A TDM integrated circuit (IC) with an 8:1 multiplexer is interfaced with a fast analog-to-digital converter (ADC) through a microcoaxial catheter cable bundle, and processed with a field-programmable gate array register-transfer level simulation. Input signals to the TDM IC are recovered with -40-dB crosstalk between the channels on the same microcoax, showing the feasibility of this system for ultrasound imaging applications.

Superharmonic imaging with chirp coded excitation: filtering spectrally overlapped harmonics.

Superharmonic imaging improves the spatial resolution by using the higher order harmonics generated in tissue. The superharmonic component is formed by combining the third, fourth, and fifth harmonics, which have low energy content and therefore poor SNR. This study uses coded excitation to increase the excitation energy. The SNR improvement is achieved on the receiver side by performing pulse compression with harmonic matched filters. The use of coded signals also introduces new filtering capabilities that are not possible with pulsed excitation. This is especially important when using wideband signals. For narrowband signals, the spectral boundaries of the harmonics are clearly separated and thus easy to filter; however, the available imaging bandwidth is underused. Wideband excitation is preferable for harmonic imaging applications to preserve axial resolution, but it generates spectrally overlapping harmonics that are not possible to filter in time and frequency domains. After pulse compression, this overlap increases the range side lobes, which appear as imaging artifacts and reduce the Bmode image quality. In this study, the isolation of higher order harmonics was achieved in another domain by using the fan chirp transform (FChT). To show the effect of excitation bandwidth in superharmonic imaging, measurements were performed by using linear frequency modulated chirp excitation with varying bandwidths of 10% to 50%. Superharmonic imaging was performed on a wire phantom using a wideband chirp excitation. Results were presented with and without applying the FChT filtering technique by comparing the spatial resolution and side lobe levels. Wideband excitation signals achieved a better resolution as expected, however range side lobes as high as -23 dB were observed for the superharmonic component of chirp excitation with 50% fractional bandwidth. The proposed filtering technique achieved >50 dB range side lobe suppression and improved the image quality without affecting the axial resolution.

The effect of amplitude modulation on subharmonic imaging with chirp excitation.

Subharmonic generation from ultrasound contrast agents depends on the spectral and temporal properties of the excitation signal. The subharmonic response can be improved by using wideband and long-duration signals. However, for sinusoidal tone-burst excitation, the effective bandwidth of the signal is inversely proportional to the signal duration. Linear frequency-modulated (LFM) and nonlinear frequency-modulated (NLFM) chirp excitations allow independent control over the signal bandwidth and duration; therefore, in this study LFM and NLFM signals were used for the insonation of microbubble populations. The amplitude modulation of the excitation waveform was achieved by applying different window functions. A customized window was designed for the NLFM chirp excitation by focusing on reducing the spectral leakage at the subharmonic frequency and increasing the subharmonic generation from microbubbles. Subharmonic scattering from a microbubble population was measured for various excitation signals and window functions. At a peak negative pressure of 600 kPa, the generated subharmonic energy by ultrasound contrast agents was 15.4 dB more for NLFM chirp excitation with 40% fractional bandwidth when compared with tone-burst excitation. For this reason, the NLFM chirp with a customized window was used as an excitation signal to perform subharmonic imaging in an ultrasound flow phantom. Results showed that the NLFM waveform with a customized window improved the subharmonic contrast by 4.35 ± 0.42 dB on average over a Hann-windowed LFM excitation.

Width-modulated square-wave pulses for ultrasound applications.

A method of output pressure control for ultrasound transducers using switched excitation is described. The method generates width-modulated square-wave pulse sequences that are suitable for driving ultrasound transducers using MOSFETs or similar devices. Sequences are encoded using an optimized level-shifted, carrier-comparison, pulse-width modulation (PWM) strategy derived from existing PWM theory, and modified specifically for ultrasound applications. The modifications are: a reduction in carrier frequency so that the smallest number of pulses are generated and minimal switching is necessary; alteration of a linear carrier form to follow a trigonometric relationship in accordance with the expected fundamental output; and application of frequency modulation to the carrier when generating frequency-modulated, amplitude- tapered signals. The PWM method permits control of output pressure for arbitrary waveform sequences at diagnostic frequencies (approximately 5 MHz) when sampled at 100 MHz, and is applicable to pulse shaping and array apodization. Arbitrary waveform generation capability is demonstrated in simulation using convolution with a transducer's impulse response, and experimentally with hydrophone measurement. Benefits in coded imaging are demonstrated when compared with fixed-width square-wave (pseudo-chirp) excitation in coded imaging, including reduction in image artifacts and peak side-lobe levels for two cases, showing 10 and 8 dB reduction in peak side-lobe level experimentally, compared with 11 and 7 dB reduction in simulation. In all cases, the experimental observations correlate strongly with simulated data.

Phase-inversion-based selective harmonic elimination (PI-SHE) in multi-level switched-mode tone- and frequency-modulated excitation.

Switched-mode operation allows the miniaturization of excitation circuitry but suffers from high harmonic distortion. This paper presents a method of phase-inversion-based selective harmonic elimination (PI-SHE) and the use of multiple switching levels. PI-SHE is shown to enable multiples of any selected harmonic to be eliminated through controlled timing of the transition between different excitation voltage levels. Multiples of the third harmonic are shown to be eliminated in three-level tone waveforms. In addition, multiples of the fifth harmonic are shown to be eliminated using five-level tone waveforms. A method of calculating the expected amplitude of each harmonic is presented. The application of PI-SHE in linear frequency-modulated (LFM) excitation is proposed. A heuristic derivation of the spectral properties of multilevel switched LFM waveforms is presented. The performance of the proposed PI-SHE method is confirmed through experimental measurement of the harmonics present in an ultrasound wave using two, three, and five levels for both tone and LFM excitation. The proposed method of controlling harmonics through the use of multilevel switched excitation is especially suitable for applications in which portability, high channel counts, and precise harmonic control are required.

Ultrasound array transmitter architecture with high timing resolution using embedded phase-locked loops.

Coarse time quantization of delay profiles within ultrasound array systems can produce undesirable side lobes in the radiated beam profile. The severity of these side lobes is dependent upon the magnitude of phase quantization error--the deviation from ideal delay profiles to the achievable quantized case. This paper describes a method to improve interchannel delay accuracy without increasing system clock frequency by utilizing embedded phase-locked loop (PLL) components within commercial field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Precise delays are achieved by shifting the relative phases of embedded PLL output clocks in 208-ps steps. The described architecture can achieve the necessary interelement timing resolution required for driving ultrasound arrays up to 50 MHz. The applicability of the proposed method at higher frequencies is demonstrated by extrapolating experimental results obtained using a 5-MHz array transducer. Results indicate an increase in transmit dynamic range (TDR) when using accurate delay profiles generated by the embedded-PLL method described, as opposed to using delay profiles quantized to the system clock.

Separation of overlapping linear frequency modulated (LFM) signals using the fractional fourier transform.

Linear frequency modulated (LFM) excitation combined with pulse compression provides an increase in SNR at the receiver. LFM signals are of longer duration than pulsed signals of the same bandwidth; consequently, in many practical situations, maintaining temporal separation between echoes is not possible. Where analysis is performed on individual LFM signals, a separation technique is required. Time windowing is unable to separate signals overlapping in time. Frequency domain filtering is unable to separate signals with overlapping spectra. This paper describes a method to separate time-overlapping LFM signals through the application of the fractional Fourier transform (FrFT), a transform operating in both time and frequency domains. A short introduction to the FrFT and its operation and calculation are presented. The proposed signal separation method is illustrated by application to a simulated ultrasound signal, created by the summation of multiple time-overlapping LFM signals and the component signals recovered with ±0.6% spectral error. The results of an experimental investigation are presented in which the proposed separation method is applied to time-overlapping LFM signals created by the transmission of a LFM signal through a stainless steel plate and water-filled pipe.