SBIR Phase II: Advanced Phased Array Ultrasound Instrument for Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE)

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This SBIR Phase II research project strives to develop an Advanced Ultrasonic Beamformer that is unparalleled in its scalability and signal processing features. The ultrasonic beamformer architecture will be unique in its breadth of features. The architecture was developed as the superset of features across several fields including medical imaging, medical therapy, bone density measurement, vascular imaging, and materials characterization. This approach provides each field with an instrument capable of operating outside the normal performance envelope, thereby presenting opportunities for the development of new uses of ultrasound. The benefits of this array include better frame rates, crisper images, and more accurate surgery. The higher frequencies used in materials characterization, when brought to medical imaging, will allow array transducer to be used where only conventional, single element probes could used in the past, for example in intra-cardiac imaging for surgical instruments, and also for tumor ablation. By design, the proposed architecture encompasses the abilities of many different fields. Each field then enjoys performance capabilities beyond what is normally available, providing a general-purpose tool for research.