$100 ultrasound machines the size of bandaids will be wearable and might be options for future smartwatches

Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone.

Ultrasound imaging is the most widely used medical imaging modality in the world when considering the number of images created annually. The forecasted growth for the ultrasound market from US$4.6 billion in 2012 to almost US$7 billion by 2019 has boosted research in medical ultrasound fields, especially with regards to transducer design.

Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of the inside of the body and send them to a computer to create sonograms. Researchers replaced the piezoelectric crystals with tiny vibrating drums made of polymer resin, called polyCMUTs (polymer capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers), which are cheaper to manufacture.

“Transducer drums have typically been made out of rigid silicon materials that require costly, environment-controlled manufacturing processes, and this has hampered their use in ultrasound,” said study lead author Carlos Gerardo, a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering at UBC. “By using polymer resin, we were able to produce polyCMUTs in fewer fabrication steps, using a minimum amount of equipment, resulting in significant cost savings.”

Sonograms produced by the UBC device were as sharp as or even more detailed than traditional sonograms produced by piezoelectric transducers, said co-author Edmond Cretu, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Nature Microsystems and Nanoengineering – Fabrication and testing of polymer-based capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers for medical imaging

Abstract

The ultrasonic transducer industry is dominated by piezoelectric materials. As an emerging alternative, capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs) offer wider bandwidth, better integration with electronics, and ease of fabricating large arrays. CMUTs have a sealed cavity between a fixed electrode and a suspended metalized membrane. Manufacturing cost and sensitivity are limiting factors in current CMUTs that depend on the fabrication equipment and, especially, on the materials used. For widespread use of CMUTs, a much lower fabrication cost that uses inexpensive materials, which maintain or improve upon existing sensitivity, is needed. Herein, a new fabrication process is described for polymer-based CMUTs (polyCMUTs) using the photopolymer SU-8 and Omnicoat. The first ultrasound B-mode image of a wire phantom created with a 64-element linear array using synthetic aperture beamforming techniques is presented. A 12 VAC signal superimposed on a 10 VDC signal was used on the transmission side, and only a bias-tee, with no amplifiers, was used on the receiving side. The low operational voltage and high sensitivity of this device can be partially attributed to a pre-biasing condition on the membrane. By using a novel sacrificial layer combined with a top electrode embedded inside the membrane, we demonstrated that SU-8 can be used to manufacture CMUTs inexpensively. Moreover, the fabrication used relatively simple equipment, and the number of fabrication steps was reduced compared to traditional CMUT fabrication. This new fabrication process has the potential to increase the use of CMUTs in the ultrasound market, including the market for wearable transducers.

15 thoughts on “$100 ultrasound machines the size of bandaids will be wearable and might be options for future smartwatches”

  1. Presumably the little ultrasounder will be mounted over some spot that needs regular checkups, such as the heart after a heart attack. I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean to include them in a smart watch? Who needs daily ultrasounds of their wrist?

  2. Presumably the little ultrasounder will be mounted over some spot that needs regular checkups such as the heart after a heart attack.I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean to include them in a smart watch? Who needs daily ultrasounds of their wrist?

  3. Presumably the little ultrasounder will be mounted over some spot that needs regular checkups, such as the heart after a heart attack. I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean to include them in a smart watch? Who needs daily ultrasounds of their wrist?

  4. Presumably the little ultrasounder will be mounted over some spot that needs regular checkups such as the heart after a heart attack.I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean to include them in a smart watch? Who needs daily ultrasounds of their wrist?

  5. Presumably the little ultrasounder will be mounted over some spot that needs regular checkups, such as the heart after a heart attack.

    I’m not sure what it is supposed to mean to include them in a smart watch? Who needs daily ultrasounds of their wrist?

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