Portable low cost ultrasound imaging system

Abstract

The applications of ultrasound in medicine have been increasing in the last decade either in diagnostics or in treatments. Ultrasound is routinely used in clinical examinations, such as pregnancy exams. On the other hand, a typical ultrasound system costs somewhere between 100k$ to 250k$ because of its (1) expensive ultrasound transducers, (2) large driving electronics, (3) processing and visualization units. High cost and large volume of the ultrasound systems prevent even wider usage of these systems. It is possible to extent the use of ultrasound in clinic environment like a stethoscope, if the size and cost had been reduced orders of magnitude. The aim of this work is to develop an ultraportable and very low cost diagnostic ultrasound imaging probe; by combining inertial sensors with the probes. The manual motion of the probe by the operator's hand movement enables scanning. The position of the probe is tracked using inertial sensors. Finally, the acoustic reflections are registered together by the help of position information of the probe to form an image.