COMPOSITE TRANSDUCERS FOR MEDICAL ULTRASONICS

我们的目标是开发和评估更好的换能器，以改善 超声生物医学图像的质量。改进的换能器将是 利用新型线性压电陶瓷/聚合物复合材料开发的 未经医学评估的材料和新型非线性材料 超声波换能器。 这是一个成熟的压电体公司与 陶瓷生产商、霍尼韦尔和久负盛名的生物医学成像 梅奥诊所的实验室。霍尼韦尔将提供并描述 多种新型陶瓷/聚合物的物理/声学性能 具有良好预测属性的复合换能器元件 生物医学成像。此外，霍尼韦尔将提供元素 由几种可能导致换能器的非线性材料制成 这将检测接收到的超声波能量的大小或功率。 梅奥集团与霍尼韦尔集团合作，将组装 将复合元件制成凹面圆盘和线阵换能器，以及 将根据分辨率单元的大小来表征它们的成像响应 以及它们在发射和接收特性方面的敏感性 例如增益带宽乘积、传输灵敏度因数、插入损耗 和品质因数使用校准的水听器。两国之间的关系 换能器元件的物理/声学特性，成像特性， 敏感性测量将被开发并用于预测 新换能器的行为。 这个项目的成功完成将带来1)更好和更多 易于制造的生物医学成像换能器和2)非线性 测量超声束强度或功率的换能器。

Our goal is to develop and evaluate better transducers for improving the quality of ultrasonic biomedical images. Improved transducers will be developed using new linear piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite materials and new nonlinear materials not previously evaluated for medical ultrasound transducers. This is a collaborative effort between a well established piezoelectric ceramics producer, Honeywell, and a well established biomedical imaging laboratory at Mayo Clinic. Honeywell will provide and characterize the physical/acoustic properties of a wide range of new ceramic/polymer composite transducer elements having attributes predictive of good biomedical imaging. In addition, Honeywell will provide elements fabricated from several nonlinear materials which may result in transducers that will detect magnitude or power of received ultrasound energy. The Mayo group, in collaboration with the Honeywell group, will assemble the composite elements into concave disc and linear array transducers, and will characterize their imaging responses, in terms of resolution cell size and their sensitivities, in terms of transmit and receive characteristics such as gain bandwidth product, transmit sensitivity factor, insertion loss and quality factor using calibrated hydrophones. Relationships between the transducer element physical/acoustic properties, the imaging properties, and the sensitivity measurements will be developed and used to predict the behavior of new transducers. Successful completion of this project would result in 1) better and more easily fabricated transducers for biomedical imaging and 2) nonlinear transducers for measurement of magnitude or power of ultrasonic beams.