An Integrated Circuit with Transmit Beamforming and Parallel Receive Channels for Real-Time Three-Dimensional Ultrasound Imaging

We present the design of an integrated circuit (IC) that will be flip-chip bonded to a 16 x 16-element CMUT array. The IC provides 16 receive channels which can be configured to receive along either of the array diagonals or on any single row of the array. On transmit, all 256 elements can be used to transmit arbitrarily focused beams. Focused transmission with the full array is made possible by on-chip pulsers and memory. A 25-V pulser and 8-bit shift register is provided for each element of the array. Prior to each transmit, new values are loaded into the shift registers. Current-con trolled one-shots control the transmit pulse widths. Circuit simulations and the IC layout are presented. Simulations predict that delay values can be loaded in less than 1.3 mu s and show the generation of precisely timed pulses. The IC is being prepared for submission to National Semiconductor for fabrication in a high-voltage BiCMOS process.