A Thin Transducer With Integrated Acoustic Metamaterial for Cardiac CT Imaging and Gating

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of death globally. Computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) is a noninvasive imaging procedure for diagnosis of CAD. However, CTCA requires cardiac gating to ensure that diagnostic-quality images are acquired in all patients. Gating reliability could be improved by utilizing ultrasound (US) to provide a direct measurement of cardiac motion; however, commercially available US transducers are not computed tomography (CT) compatible. To address this challenge, a CT-compatible 2.5-MHz cardiac phased array transducer is developed via modeling, and then, an initial prototype is fabricated and evaluated for acoustic and radiographic performance. This 92-element piezoelectric array transducer is designed with a thin acoustic backing (6.5 mm) to reduce the volume of the radiopaque acoustic backing that typically causes arrays to be incompatible with CT imaging. This thin acoustic backing contains two rows of air-filled, triangular prism-shaped voids that operate as an acoustic diode. The developed transducer has a bandwidth of 50% and a single-element SNR of 9.9 dB compared to 46% and 14.7 dB for a reference array without an acoustic diode. In addition, the acoustic diode reduces the time-averaged reflected acoustic intensity from the back wall of the acoustic backing by 69% compared to an acoustic backing of the same composition and thickness without the acoustic diode. The feasibility of real-time echocardiography using this array is demonstrated
in vivo
, including the ability to image the position of the interventricular septum, which has been demonstrated to effectively predict cardiac motion for prospective, low radiation CTCA gating.