This paper presents an area-and power-efficient ASIC for 3D forward-looking intravascular ultrasound imaging. The ASIC is intended to be mounted at the tip of a catheter, and has a circular active area with a diameter of 1.5 mm on top of which a 2D array of piezo-electric transducer elements is integrated. It requires only 4 micro-coaxial cables to interface 64 receive (RX) and 16 transmit (TX) elements with an imaging system. To do so, it routes high-voltage (HV) pulses generated by the system to selected TX elements using compact HV switch circuits, digitizes the resulting echo signal received by a selected RX element locally, and employs an energy-efficient loadmodulation datalink to return the digitized echo signal to the system in a robust manner. A multi-functional command line provides the required sampling clock, configuration data and supply voltage for the HV switches. The ASIC has been realized in a 0.18 μm HV CMOS technology and consumes only 9.1 mW. Electrical measurements show 28 V HV switching and RX digitization with a 16 MHz bandwidth and 53 dB dynamic range. Acoustical measurements demonstrate successful pulse transmission and reception. Finally, a 3D ultrasound image of a 3-needle phantom is generated to demonstrate the imaging capability.
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