Wide bandwidth fiber-optic ultrasound probe in MOMS technology: Preliminary signal processing results

An ultrasonic probe consisting of two optical fiber-based miniaturized transducers for wideband ultrasound emission and detection is employed for the characterization of in vitro biological tissues. In the probe, ultrasound generation is obtained by thermoelastic emission from patterned carbon films in Micro-Opto-Mechanical-System (MOMS) devices mounted on the tip of an optical fiber, whereas acousto-optical detection is performed in a similar way by a miniaturized polymeric interferometer. The microprobe presents a wide, flat bandwidth that is a very attractive feature for ultrasonic investigation, especially for tissue characterization. Thanks to the very high ultrasonic frequencies obtained, the probe is able to reveal different details of the object under investigation by analyzing the ultrasonic signal within different frequencies ranges, as shown by specific experiments performed on a patterned cornstarch flour sample in vitro. This is confirmed by measurements executed to determine the lateral resolution of the microprobe at different frequencies of about 70 μm at 120 MHz. Moreover, measurements performed with the wideband probe in pulsed-echo mode on a histological finding of porcine kidney are presented, on which two different spectral signal processing algorithms are applied. After processing, the ultrasonic spectral features show a peculiar spatial distribution on the sample, which is expected to depend on different ultrasonic backscattering properties of the analyzed tissues.