초음파 의료 영상 시스템을 위한 재구성 가능한 아날로그 집적회로

This paper presents an analog front-end integrated circuit (IC) for medical ultrasound imaging systems using standard 0.18-µm CMOS process. The proposed front-end circuit includes the transmit part which consists of 15-V high-voltage pulser operating at 2.6 MHz, and the receive part which consists of switch and a low-power low-noise preamplifier. Depending on the operation mode, the output driver in the transmit pulser can be reconfigured as the switch in the receive path and thus the area of the overall front-end IC is reduced by over 70% in comparison to previous work. The designed single-channel front-end prototype consumes less than 0.045 mm² of core area and can be utilized as a key building block in highly-integrated multi-array ultrasound medical imaging systems.