AN INTEGRATED MULTIELEMENT ARRAY TRANSDUCER FOR ULTRASOUND IMAGING

Much progress has been made towards integrating the electronic circuit ry associated with either linear or phased ultrasonic array scanning i nto the hand-held case of the transducer. The number of wires required to connect the transducer back to the display system has been dramati cally reduced and the path length between transducer elements and the driver circuits kept to a few millimetres. To achieve this new constru ction, polymer transducer arrays have been fabricated and the pulse-co ntrol circuitry has been integrated onto custom-designed silicon chips .