A transducer fixation apparatus is configured to position and secure to a skin surface of a patient a transducer to allow repeated or continuous monitoring of blood flow in a subsurface vessel. The transducer fixation apparatus includes a housing having a plurality of flexible attachment wings that attach and conform in shape to the skin surface using an adhesive material present on each of the wing undersides. In some embodiments the wings may be biased upward away from the skin surface to facilitate positioning of the fixation apparatus prior to skin attachment. Alternative embodiments include a detachable retainer clip to hold the wings away from the mounting surface during placement as well as an optional positioning wand to aid with placement. Other embodiments may include a separate flexible attachment wing configured to hold a gel pad for acoustic coupling to the skin surface, the separate flexible attachment wing intended to be joined to the housing of the transducer fixation apparatus prior to skin surface attachment.

An imaging device includes a two dimensional array of piezoelectric elements. Each piezoelectric element includes: a piezoelectric layer; a bottom electrode disposed on a bottom side of the piezoelectric layer and configured to receive a transmit signal during a transmit mode and develop an electrical charge during a receive mode; and a first top electrode disposed on a top side of the piezoelectric layer; and a first conductor, wherein the first top electrodes of a portion of the piezoelectric elements in a first column of the two dimensional array are electrically coupled to the first conductor.

The present application provides an ultrasound probe comprising a housing that includes a coupling interface having a sinusoidal geometry. The housing is formed by a first body (300) and a second body having opposite and corresponding sinusoidal geometries. The first body includes a first proximal portion (105) and a first distal portion (107). The first proximal portion comprises a first sinusoidal shape (326). The second body includes a second proximal portion and a second distal portion. The second proximal portion comprises an opposite second sinusoidal shape. The first body and the second body are coupled to form a handle having a sinusoidal interface. Further, the first distal portion and the second distal portion form a head portion at which the ultrasound transducer assembly is disposed.

An ultrasonic radiator includes a plurality of plate-like elements, a supporter, and a first adhesive. The plurality of plate-like elements each have, on the front side or the back side, a radiation surface from which ultrasonic waves are emitted. The supporter holds the plurality of plate-like elements in such a manner that the respective radiation surfaces in different directional orientations are directed toward the same location. The plurality of plate-like elements are bonded to the supporter with the first adhesive. The plurality of plate-like elements each include a plurality of vibratory elements that are variously located in the radiation surface and that generate ultrasonic waves. The first adhesive is applied to lateral surfaces of each of the plurality of plate-like elements.

The invention relates to ultrasound imaging method and apparatus suitable for minimally invasive ultrasound diagnostic devices in cardiac ablation monitoring and in tumor ablation monitoring. The present invention proposes an assembly of forward and side-facing transducers and a system of embedded forward and side-facing transducers in apertures on surfaces of the assembly. This provides control of the acoustic properties of the transducer and improved ablation monitoring when the assembly is incorporated in a medical device.

An ultrasound transducer includes: an acoustic matching layer; plural piezoelectric elements arrayed on the acoustic matching layer; and plural blocks arranged adjacent to at least one of ends of the piezoelectric elements in an elevation direction of the piezoelectric elements, each of the plural blocks including an abrasive.

The present invention related to an ultrasound imaging system win which the scan head includes a beamformer circuit that performs far field subarray beamforming or includes a sparse array selecting circuit that actuates selected elements. When using a hierarchical two-stage or three-stage beamforming system, three dimensional ultrasound images can be generated in real-time. The invention further relates to flexible printed circuit boards in the probe head. The invention furthermore related to the use of coded or spread spectrum signaling in ultrasound imagining systems. Matched filters based on pulse compression using Golay code pairs improve the signal-to-noise ratio thus enabling third harmonic imaging with suppressed sidelobes. The system is suitable for 3D full volume cardiac imaging.

Imaging devices, systems, and methods are provided. Some embodiments of the present disclosure are particularly directed to imaging a region of interest in tissue with photoacoustic and ultrasound modalities. In some embodiments, a medical sensing system (100) includes a measurement apparatus (102) configured to be placed within a vascular pathway. The measurement apparatus may include a sensor array (106) comprising two or more sensor modalities. The sensor array may be configured to receive sound waves created by the interaction between emitted optical pulses and tissue, transmit and receive ultrasound signals, and rotate around a longitudinal axis of the measurement device. The medical sensing system may also include a processing engine operable to produce images of the region of interest and a display configured to visually display the image of the region of interest.

An imaging system includes transmit circuitry, a transducer array with an array of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements, a beamformer, a decoder and a display. The transmit circuitry includes a signal generator and at least one excitation coding scheme. The transmit circuitry combines an excitation signal generated by the signal generator with an excitation coding scheme of the at least one excitation coding scheme, generating a coded excitation signal. The array of transducer elements is excited with the coded excitation signal to emit ultrasound signals. The coding scheme does not introduce heating on the capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements. The array of ultrasonic transducer elements receives echo signals produced in response to the ultrasound signals interacting with structure and generates electrical signals indicative thereof. The beamformer beamforms the electrical signals, the decoder removes the coding from the beamformed signals, and the display displays an image with the decoded signals.

Within the field of elastography, a new approach analyzes the limiting case of shear waves established as a reverberant field. In this framework, it is assumed that a distribution of shear waves exists, oriented across all directions in 3D (e.g. 2D space+time). The simultaneous multi-frequency application of reverberant shear wave fields can be accomplished by applying an array of external sources that can be excited by multiple frequencies within a bandwidth, for example 50, 100, 150, . . . 500 Hz, all contributing to the shear wave field produced in the liver or other target organ. This enables the analysis of the dispersion of shear wave speed as it increases with frequency, indicating the viscoelastic and lossy nature of the tissue under study. Furthermore, dispersion images can be created and displayed alongside the shear wave speed images. Studies on breast and liver tissues using the multi-frequency reverberant shear wave technique, employing frequencies up to 700 Hz in breast tissue, and robust reverberant patterns of shear waves across the entire liver and kidney in obese patients are reported. Dispersion images are shown to have contrast between tissue types and with quantitative values that align with previous studies.