Integrated Circuits for 3D High-Frame-Rate Intracardiac Echocardiography Probes

This thesis describes the design of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for high-frame-rate 3D intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) probes. The work follows the whole process from the analysis of the application to the testing of a prototype with all envisioned functionality. It starts with the evaluation of the main challenges posed...

Beamforming Strategies for Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Surface-related multiple estimation and removal with focus on shallow water

For exploration and development of the earth, seismic surveys are acquired to provide information about the subsurface, within specifications of accuracy set by geologists and engineers, and within business constraints on budgets and turn-around time for processing and interpretation of the data. The case of seismic surveys that are acquired,...

Advanced Measurement Techniques and Circuits for Array-Based Transit-Time Ultrasonic Flow Meters

This thesis describes the design, prototyping and evaluation of matrix-based clamp-on ultrasonic flow meters. Several new measurement techniques are presented as well as an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designed for accurate measurement of flow velocity with matrix transducers.<br/><br/>The influence of circuit topologies on the...

Integrated Transceiver Circuits for Carotid and Intra-Cardiac Ultrasound Imaging

This thesis describes the design and realization of integrated ultrasound transceivers for carotid artery imaging and intracardiac echocardiography (ICE). The goal of this work is to investigate system- and circuit-level techniques to address requirements and implementation bottlenecks in these applications. Prototype chips are presented to...

From wave speed to cardiac stiffness

Diastolic heart failure is one of the principal causes of death in Western countries, and there is currently no treatment available; prevention, on the other hand, may be possible, provided an early enough diagnosis. The worsening of diastolic functionality is associated with increased values of cardiac stiffness, which could therefore provide a...

Full-Waveform Inversion for Breast Ultrasound

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer for women and in developed countries it forms one of their largest threats. Many studies have shown that early detection by screening is important for achieving a successful treatment and reducing the mortality rate. Nowadaysmammography is the gold standard for breast cancer screening. However,...

High-precision Versatile Ultrasonic Flow Meters Based on Matrix Transducer Arrays

Ultrasonic flow meters are widely applied to measure flow in a variety of applications. The vast majority of ultrasonic flow meters are based on the measurement of the transit time of an acoustic pulse through the fluid. This can either be done in-line, by inserting a spool piece with ultrasonic transducers into the pipe carrying the fluid, or...

Integrated Circuits for Miniature 3–D Ultrasound Probes: Solutions for the Interconnection Bottleneck

This thesis describes low-power application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs to mitigate the constraint of cable count in miniature 3-D TEE probes. Receive cable count reduction techniques including subarray beamforming and digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) have been explored and the effectiveness of these techniques has been...

Simultaneous joint migration inversion as a high-resolution time-lapse imaging method for reservoir monitoring

During the past decade, time-lapse seismic technology has been widely applied in hydrocarbon reservoir management. It is a very powerful method to obtain information on reservoir changes in the inter-well regions. This information helps to identify bypassed hydrocarbons and extend the economic life of a field. In a typical scenario, one baseline...

Ultrasound Matrix Transducers for High Frame Rate 3D Medical Imaging

Seismic imaging based on Joint Migration Inversion: Handling missing low frequencies and horizontally propagating waves

Seismic imaging is a significant technology to provide the image of the subsurface in several fields such as hydrocarbon exploration/production and civil engineering. A fundamental problem in seismic imaging is that both the depth reflectivity and velocity distribution of the subsurface have to be predicted by only seismic events observed at the...

Front-End ASICs for 3-D Ultrasound: From Beamforming to Digitization

This thesis describes the analysis, design and evaluation of front-end application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for 3-D medical ultrasound imaging, with the focus on the receive electronics. They are specifically designed for next-generation miniature 3-D ultrasound devices, such as transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), intracardiac...

Characterization of a novel Optical Micro-machined Ultrasound Transducer

We design and demonstrate a prototype ultrasound sensor based on a photonic micro-ring resonator integrated on a silicon membrane, and show that it can detect very low pressure ultrasound waves. The use of integrated photonics in future array transducers has several benefits: for instance it provides a small spatial footprint, compatibility with...

Closed-Loop Surface Related Multiple Estimation

Surface-related multiple elimination (SRME) is one of the most commonly used methods for suppressing surface multiples. However, in order to obtain an accurate surface multiple estimation, dense source and receiver sampling is required. The traditional approach to this problem is performing data interpolation prior to multiple estimation. Though...

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

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...