Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7135915 | Sensors and Actuators A: Physical | 2015 | 7 Pages |
Abstract
A transducer with an angled and focused aperture for intravascular ultrasound imaging has been developed. The acoustic stack for the angled-focused transducer was made of PMN-PT single crystal with one matching layer, one protective coating layer, and a highly damped backing layer. It was then press-focused to a desired focal length and inserted into a thin needle housing with an angled tip. A transducer with an angled and unfocused aperture was also made, following the same fabrication procedure, to compare the performance of the two transducers. The focused and unfocused transducers were tested to measure their center frequencies, bandwidths, and spatial resolutions. Lateral resolution of the angled-focused transducer (AFT) improved more than two times compared to that of the angled-unfocused transducer (AUT). A tissue-mimicking phantom in water and a rabbit aorta tissue sample in rabbit blood were scanned using AFT and AUT. Imaging with AFT offered improved contrast, over imaging with AUT, of the tissue-mimicking phantom and the rabbit aorta tissue sample by 23Â dB and 8Â dB, respectively. The results show that AFT has strong potential to provide morphological and pathological information of coronary arteries with high resolution and high contrast.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemistry
Electrochemistry
Authors
Sangpil Yoon, Jay Williams, Bong Jin Kang, Changhan Yoon, Nestor Cabrera-Munoz, Jong Seob Jeong, Sang Goo Lee, K. Kirk Shung, Hyung Ham Kim,