High-frequency ultrasound miniature transducers for tissue imaging

We have fabricated a miniature 120-MHz transducer for imaging the internal structure of living samples, and mounted it in a 3-mm-diameter rod-shaped probe which ensures contact with a tissue to evaluate the tissue imaging capability of the transducer. The transducer consists of a thin film of 12.5-mu m thick ZnO sandwiched between two metal electrodes, the bottom one deposited on a sapphire substrate whose other face has a polished concave-sphere acoustic lens. Both the lens diameter and the sphere radius are 0.5 mm; that is, the F number of the lens is 1. The lens of the transducer faces outwards in the probe so that the ultrasound can be transmitted and received directly by it in the radial direction of the rod without any mirrors. As the probe rotates mechanically around its axis and shifts in the direction of the axis, a cylindrical plane created by the locus of the beam focus is located inside of the tissue. Using this scanning, we form tissue images in the C-scan mode in a cylindrical plane within the target tissue. Preliminary results for imaging an in vitro bovine kidney sample into which the probe was inserted demonstrate that the fabricated probe can image microscopic structure inside tissue samples.