PolyCMUTs: a new ultrasound transducer technology for medical imaging

随着一种新的换能器技术的出现，超声波领域正在被颠覆。传统的换能器技术是基于压电式原理，将电能转化为超声波，反之亦然。这是一项成熟的技术，使超声在临床上得到了许多应用，使其成为最常用的医学成像手段。不幸的是，基于压电的换能器受到这些压电晶体性质的限制，这意味着即使是最新的智能手机连接的换能器也仍然是手持的，价格昂贵，生产量小。此外，他们还需要专家进行人工操作和解释。这种颠覆来自电容式微机械超声换能器(CMUT)，它用紧密集成的微型制造鼓取代晶体，并与芯片上的电子设备一起制造。CMUT具有颠覆性，因为它们通过大批量制造提供了巨大的成本优势，但在质量和制造适合3D成像的负担得起的换能器的能力方面也具有优势。在UBC，我们发明了一种由软聚合物制成的高度创新的CMUT，因此被称为PolyCMUT。令人兴奋的是，我们的PolyCMUT拥有所有这些优势，而且它们可以灵活、大型、透明，通过使用敏捷的制造设施，可以获得更高的性价比。这些独特的功能将用于我们的第一个滩头产品：一种新的3D成像传感器，既经济实惠，又适合检测许多疾病和障碍。此外，人工智能的出现也加剧了这种颠覆，以增强运营、分析和决策。云连接的PolyCMUT和AI的结合也可以为新用户和新应用打开超声波。一个长期目标是提高乳腺癌的检测水平。我们建议将我们的PolyCMUT成像添加到同一检查中的乳房X光检查中，从而有效地将乳腺癌成像的成像能力提高一倍。这将改善癌症检测和患者预后。总体而言，使用我们的PolyCMUT产品扩大超声波的使用将对多种疾病的检测和许多加拿大人的生活产生影响。

The ultrasound field is being disrupted by the advent of a new transducer technology. The traditional transducer technology is based on the piezoelectric principle to convert electricity into ultrasound and vice versa. This is a mature technology that has enabled many clinical applications for ultrasound making it the most frequently used medical imaging modality. Unfortunately, piezoelectric-based transducers are limited by the nature of these piezoelectric "crystals" meaning that even the newest smart-phone connected transducers are still hand-held, expensive and have low-volume manufacturing. Moreover, they need experts to perform manual operation and interpretation. The disruption is coming from CMUTs (Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasound Transducers) that replace the crystals with tiny microfabricated drums that are integrated tightly and made together with electronics on chips. CMUTs are disruptive because they offer huge advantages in cost through high-volume manufacturing but also advantages in quality and the ability to create affordable transducers suitable for 3D imaging. At UBC, we invented a highly innovative CMUT made from soft polymers, hence called polyCMUT. What is exciting is that our polyCMUTs have all these advantages plus they can be flexible, large, transparent, and an even better cost-performance ratio by using agile manufacturing facilities. These unique capabilities will be used in our first beachhead product: a new 3D imaging transducer that is both affordable and suitable for detecting many diseases and disorders. Adding to the disruption is the advent of AI to enhance the operation, analysis and decision making. The combination of cloud-connected polyCMUTs and AI can also open up ultrasound to new users and new applications. One long-term goal is improving breast cancer detection. We propose to effectively double the imaging capability of breast cancer imaging by adding our polyCMUT imaging to mammography within the same examination. This would improve cancer detection and patient outcomes. In general, the expanded use of ultrasound using our polyCMUT products will have an impact on the detection of multiple diseases and on the lives of many Canadians.