Modeling of an Ultrasonic Transducer for Cardiac Imaging

Within Philips Research, ultrasonic transducers are integrated into the minimally invasive needles and catheters for cardiac imaging. The existing ultrasonic transducers have a low signal to noise ratio (SNR) and a low bandwidth of the received echo and, therefore, the transducer does not perform well for the cardiac imaging application. A high SNR is needed to increase penetration depth into heart tissue and an increased bandwidth is required to improve resolution. Therefore, there is a need for a model that can predict the behavior of the ultrasonic transducer. In this report, a model is developed and implemented for the complete ultrasonic measurement system. This model is used for the improvement of the design of a transducer and can also be used for design of ultrasonic transducer for various applications. Various parameters needed for the simulation are estimated experimentally. The comparison between the response of an ultrasonic transducer and obtained model indicates the high accuracy of the model to predict the behavior of an ultrasonic transducer.