Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory
Department of Microelectronics

News

Our work on Intravascular Ultrasound featured on the cover of TUFFC

  • Thursday, 8 November 2018

The IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control selected our paper

    J. Janjic, M. Tan, E. Noothout, C. Chen, Z. Chan, Z. Y. Chang, R. H. S. H. Beurskens, G. van Soest, A. F. W. van der Steen, M. D. Verweij, M. A. P. Pertijs, and N. de Jong, "A 2D ultrasound transducer with front-end ASIC and low cable count for 3D forward-looking intravascular imaging: Performance and characterization," IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, vol. 65, no. 10, pp. 1832-1844, Oct. 2018 (link)

to be featured on the cover of the October 2018 issue.

This paper is the result of a collaboration on intravascular ultrasound imaging between the Ultrasound ASICs group at the Electronic Instrumentation Lab, the Thoraxcenter at Erasmus MC, and the Laboratory of Acoustical Wavefield Imaging at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology.

Forward-looking intravascular ultrasound (FL-IVUS) holds rich potential for guidance of complex vascular interventions, such as recanalization of coronary chronic total occlusions. The realization of FL-IVUS devices is fraught with technical challenges, as a high-resolution volumetric image needs to be created from a small (< 1.5 mm) aperture with scant space for cabling and electronics. In this issue of the Transactions, we present an innovative concept for an FL-IVUS matrix array, consisting of 16 transmit (yellow) and 64 receive elements (red), addressed by only four cables. A dedicated front-end ASIC performs element addressing and received signal amplification. The realized configuration produces a narrow pulse-echo beam profile with sidelobes below −20 dB. 3-D synthetic aperture imaging (bottom) at a volume rate of 100 Hz is feasible.

Details on the ASIC, which was designed at the Electronic Instrumentation Lab by Mingliang Tan, Chao Chen, Zhao Chen and Michiel Pertijs, can be found in

    M. Tan, C. Chen, Z. Chen, J. Janjic, V. Daeichin, Z. Y. Chang, E. Noothout, G. van Soest, M. D. Verweij, N. de Jong, and M. A. P. Pertijs, "A front-end ASIC with high-voltage transmit switching and receive digitization for 3D forward-looking intravascular ultrasound imaging," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 2284-2297, Aug. 2018 (link)

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