Towards 3D ultrasound imaging of the carotid artery using a programmable and tileable matrix array

Accurate assessment of carotid artery disease by measuring blood flow, plaque deformation and pulse wave velocity using ultrasound imaging requires 3D information. Additionally, the volume rates should be high enough (> 1 kHz) to capture the full range of these fast transient phenomena. For this purpose, we have built a programmable, tileable matrix array that is capable of providing 3D ultrasound imaging at such volume rates. This array contains an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) right beneath the acoustic piezo-stack. The ASIC enables fast programmable switching between various configurations of elements connected to the acquisition system via a number of channels far smaller than the number of transducer elements. This design also allows for expanding the footprint by tiling several of these arrays together into one large array. We explain the working principles and show the first basic imaging results of a 2-by-1 tiled array.