Design and Fabrication of a Miniaturized Convex Array for Combined Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Imaging of the Prostate

Although transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) imaging is widely used for screening and diagnosing prostate cancer, it is often not found on TRUS images, depending on its stage, size, and location. In addition, due to the weak echo signal and the low contrast of TRUS images, it is difficult to diagnose earl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control ferroelectrics, and frequency control, 2018-11, Vol.65 (11), p.2086-2096
Main Authors: Jang, Jihun, Chang, Jin Ho
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceptable noise levels
Acoustics
Arrays
Biopsy
Crosstalk
Diagnostic systems
Field of view
Image contrast
Image quality
Imaging
Medical imaging
Miniaturized convex array
Optical fibers
Patients
Performance evaluation
photoacoustic
Probes
Prostate
Prostate cancer
transrectal ultrasound/photoacoustic (TRUS/PA) probe
Tumors
Ultrasonic imaging
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Summary:Although transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) imaging is widely used for screening and diagnosing prostate cancer, it is often not found on TRUS images, depending on its stage, size, and location. In addition, due to the weak echo signal and the low contrast of TRUS images, it is difficult to diagnose early-stage prostate cancers and distinguish malignant tumors from benign prostatic hyperplasia. For this reason, TRUS image-guided biopsy is mandatory to confirm the malignancy of the suspicious tumor, but the diagnostic accuracy of initial biopsy is only 20%-30%, so that the patients inevitably undergo repeated biopsies. TRUS-photoacoustic (TRUS-PA) imaging is one way to resolve those problems. However, the development of a TRUS-PA probe, in which an ultrasound array transducer and optical fibers are integrated, is demanding because the overall size of the probe should be as small as possible for the convenience of the patients, while providing the desired performances. Here, we report a recently developed TRUS-PA probe. The core element of the TRUS-PA is a miniaturized 128-element, 7-MHz convex array transducer of which size in the lateral and elevational directions is 11.4 and 5 mm, respectively. A new concept of a flexible printed circuit board was also developed to limit the size of the TRUS-PA probe to less than 15 mm. From the performance evaluation, it was found that the developed array with a field-of-view of 134° has a center frequency of 6.75 MHz, a −6-dB fractional bandwidth of 66%, and a crosstalk of less than −45 dB. In the tissue-mimicking phantom test and ex vivo experiments, the miniaturized convex array proved to be capable of providing combined US and PA images with acceptable imaging quality in spite of its small size.
ISSN:0885-3010
1525-8955
DOI:10.1109/TUFFC.2018.2864664