Annular CMUT arrays for side looking intravascular ultrasound imaging

Although side looking intravascular ultrasound (SL-IVUS) imaging systems using single element piezoelectric transducers set the resolution standard in the assessment of the extent of coronary artery disease, improvements in transducer performance are needed to perform harmonic imaging and high resolution imaging of vulnerable plaque. With their small channel count; annular arrays exploiting the inherent broad bandwidth of CMUTs and electronic focusing capability of integrated electronics provide a path for desired SL-IVUS imaging catheters. In this paper, we first describe the design, low temperature fabrication of an 8401 mu m diameter, 8 element CMUT annular array. Testing of the individual elements in oil shows a uniform device behavior with 100% fractional bandwidth around 20MHz without including the effects of attenuation and diffraction. We also present linear scan imaging results obtained on wire targets in oil, tissue and tissue mimicking phantoms using both unfocused and dynamically focused transducers. The results for axial and lateral resolution are in agreement predicted by the simulations and show the feasibility of this approach for high resolution SL-IVUS imaging.