4-D Echo-Particle Image Velocimetry in a Left Ventricular Phantom

Left ventricular (LV) blood flow is an inherently complex time-varying 3-D phenomenon, where 2-D quantification often ignores the effect of out-of-plane motion. In this study, we describe high frame rate 4-D echocardiographic particle image velocimetry (echo-PIV) using a prototype matrix transesophageal transducer and a dynamic LV phantom for...

Feasibility of High Frame Rate 3-D Intracardiac Echography using Fan-Beam Transmissions

Reproducibility of Natural Shear Wave Elastography Measurements

For the quantification of myocardial function, myocardial stiffness can potentially be measured non-invasively using shear wave elastography. Clinical diagnosis requires high precision. In 10 healthy volunteers, we studied the reproducibility of the measurement of propagation speeds of shear waves induced by aortic and mitral valve closure ...

High Frame Rate Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound for Velocimetry in the Human Abdominal Aorta

Treatment of abdominal aortic (AA) aneurysms and stenotic lesions may be improved by analyzing their associated blood flow patterns. Angle-independent blood flow patterns in the AA can be obtained by combining echo-particle image velocimetry (ePIV) with high frame rate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography. However, ePIV performance is affected...

A Reconfigurable Ultrasound Transceiver ASIC With 24 x 40 Elements for 3-D Carotid Artery Imaging

This paper presents an ultrasound transceiver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed for 3-D ultrasonic imaging of the carotid artery. This application calls for an array of thousands of ultrasonic transducer elements, far exceeding the number of channels of conventional imaging systems. The 3.6 x 6.8 mm² ASIC...

Fast Volumetric Imaging Using a Matrix Transesophageal Echocardiography Probe with Partitioned Transmit–Receive Array

We describe a 3-D multiline parallel beamforming scheme for real-time volumetric ultrasound imaging using a prototype matrix transesophageal echocardiography probe with diagonally diced elements and separated transmit and receive arrays. The elements in the smaller rectangular transmit array are directly wired to the ultrasound system. The...

Multiline 3D beamforming using micro-beamformed datasets for pediatric transesophageal echocardiography

Until now, no matrix transducer has been realized for 3D transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in pediatric patients. In 3D TEE with a matrix transducer, the biggest challenges are to connect a large number of elements to a standard ultrasound system, and to achieve a high volume rate (>200 Hz). To address these issues, we have recently...

A Pitch-Matched Front-End ASIC With Integrated Subarray Beamforming ADC for Miniature 3-D Ultrasound Probes

This paper presents a front-end application-specified integrated circuit (ASIC) integrated with a 2-D PZT matrix transducer that enables in-probe digitization with acceptable power dissipation for the next-generation endoscopic and catheter-based 3-D ultrasound imaging systems. To achieve power-efficient massively parallel analog-to-digital...

Cardiac Shear Wave Elastography Using a Clinical Ultrasound System

The propagation velocity of shear waves relates to tissue stiffness. We prove that a regular clinical cardiac ultrasound system can determine shear wave velocity with a conventional unmodified tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) application. The investigation was performed on five tissue phantoms with different stiffness using a research platform...

Cardiac Shear Wave Velocity Detection in the Porcine Heart

Cardiac muscle stiffness can potentially be estimated non-invasively with shear wave elastography. Shear waves are present on the septal wall after mitral and aortic valve closure, thus providing an opportunity to assess stiffness in early systole and early diastole. We report on the shear wave recordings of 22 minipigs with high-frame-rate...

A Front-End ASIC with Receive Sub-array Beamforming Integrated with a 32 × 32 PZT Matrix Transducer for 3-D Transesophageal Echocardiography

This paper presents a power-and area-efficient front-end application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that is directly integrated with an array of 32 × 32 piezoelectric transducer elements to enable next-generation miniature ultrasound probes for real-time 3-D transesophageal echocardiography. The 6.1 × 6.1 mm² ASIC, implemented...