Low-Power Receive-Electronics for a Miniature 3D Ultrasound Probe

Doctoral thesis (2012)

Authors

Contributors

G.C.M. Meijer (promotor)
N. De Jong (promotor)
M.A.P. Pertijs (promotor)
Department
Microelectronics & Computer Engineering (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2012 Yu, Z.
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Published Date

02-04-2012

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Microelectronics & Computer Engineering

Abstract

This thesis describes the design of a front-end application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), which will be put into the tip of a miniature ultrasound probe for 3D Trans-Esophageal Echocardiography (TEE). To enable 3D TEE, a matrix piezoelectric ultrasound transducer with more than 2000 elements will be used. Since a gastroscopic tube cannot accommodate the cables needed to connect all the transducer elements directly to an imaging system, local channel-count reduction is necessary. The main task of the ASIC is to provide appropriate signal conditioning in the tip of the probe to achieve channel-count reduction. The main goal of this thesis work is to design such an ASIC using simple, low-power circuits, while still maintaining good image quality. In addition to the electronics design, the interconnection between the matrix transducer and the ASIC is another important parallel research topic.