Abstract
Ultrasound is one of the most widely used imaging tools for non-destructive testing (NDT) and non-invasive medical diagnosis. Since its beginnings in the 1950s, ultrasound imaging research has led to innovations such as new sensors, signal processing, and hardware development. After more than fifty years, the field continues to evolve, aided by advances in electronics and digital hardware. However, the field remains under-researched in terms of experimental open-source hardware. An open, flexible, and cost-efficient platform is still needed for many basic medical and testing applications. A platform of this kind would support the efforts of researchers, makers, and device developers in accelerating ultrasound research and development. The aim of this review is to identify literature relevant to the understanding, design, and operation of simple ultrasound devices and to present this body of knowledge in a format that is easily accessible to ultrasound system designers. It also provides a summary of current ultrasound research to introduce readers to trends of interest. We capture design and use considerations from classical and modern instruments. We cover both NDT and medical applications, starting with a review of the design context, followed by a review of existing architectures and analog buildings blocks, followed by a survey of digital options available to support and complement the hardware.
Highlights
The aim of this review is to identify literature relevant to the understanding, design, and operation of simple ultrasound devices and to present this body of knowledge in a format that is accessible to ultrasound system designers
Ultrasound technology is attracting the attention of researchers, from college students to post-docs (Xu Zhao, Hebden, and Yerworth 2021), who are exploring applications that rely on non-destructive testing or medical imaging
The required functions in an ultrasound pulse-echo system are relatively standard and are well described in the literature (Ali 2008). They consist in a “pulser” creating the high-voltage pulse, a “receiver” protecting the downstream components, a “Time Gain Compensation” (TGC) amplifier to prepare the signal to the “Analog to Digital Converter” (ADC), which digitizes this signal
Summary
Ultrasound has been a developing field in medical imaging and non-destructive testing and exploration (NDT/NDE) since the 1950s. Ultrasound is today a relatively mature technology (Kjeken et al 2011), it remains an active area of study (Lanza 2020) New technologies, such as capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs) and compressed sensing (CS) (Kruizinga et al 2017; Liebgott et al 2012), have the potential to revolutionize ultrasound imaging and dramatically improve its affordability. Renewed interest in ultrasound technologies follows the development of multi-modal devices, i.e., systems that combine ultrasound with electrical, MRI, optical, and tomography imaging modalities. Open hardware has been shown to lower barriers to product research (Pandey and Vora 2019) and promote technology use. It can have a disruptive effect on the ultrasound market by enabling shorter development cycles, allowing for more rapid iterations of products It can enable users to access and repair devices by making use of freely available online documentation and support from the open-source community (Gibney 2016)
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