Ultrasound-on-chip platform for medical imaging, analysis, and collective intelligence

Abstract

Over the past half-century, ultrasound imaging has become a key technology for assessing an ever-widening range of medical conditions at all stages of life. Despite ultrasound’s proven value, expensive systems that require domain expertise in image acquisition and interpretation have limited its broad adoption. The proliferation of portable and low-cost ultrasound imaging can improve global health and also enable broad clinical and academic studies with great impact on the fields of medicine. Here, we describe the design of a complete ultrasound-on-chip, the first to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for 13 indications, comprising a two-dimensional array of silicon-based microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) ultrasonic sensors directly integrated into complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor-based control and processing electronics to enable an inexpensive whole-body imaging probe. The fabrication and design of the transducer array with on-chip analog and digital circuits, having an operating power consumption of 3 W or less, are described, in which approximately 9,000 seven-level feedback-based pulsers are individually addressable to each MEMS element and more than 11,000 amplifiers, more than 1,100 analog-to-digital converters, and more than 1 trillion operations per second are implemented. We quantify the measured performance and the ability to image areas of the body that traditionally takes three separate probes. Additionally, two applications of this platform are described—augmented reality assistance that guides the user in the acquisition of diagnostic-quality images of the heart and algorithms that automate the measurement of cardiac ejection fraction, an indicator of heart health.

Point-of-care ultrasound for tuberculosis management in Sub-Saharan Africa—a balanced SWOT analysis

“…The advent of ultrasound-on-a-chip has transformed the technology into a portable, pocket-sized mobile health device, while retaining an acceptable diagnostic performance and the versatility of their costly and cumbersome predecessors. (Rothberg et al 2021) Owing to its ease-of-use, affordability, and low maintenance and consumable requirements, POCUS has emerged as an attractive skill in resource-limited settings, where out-of-pocket specialist care and inconsistent radiology services erode health equity. (Yadav et al 2021) Its potential to be integrated into the standard clinical exam analogously to the stethoscope is already well recognized.…”

Hardware Architectures for Real-Time Medical Imaging

“…It is a second-generation ASIC that employed an improved switch design to minimize clock feedthrough and charge-injection effects of high-voltage metaloxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, which in the first-generation ASIC caused imaging artifacts [157]. Rothberg et al described the design of the first ultrasound-onchip to be cleared by the FDA for 13 indications, comprising a two-dimensional array of silicon-based microelectromechanical systems ultrasonic sensors directly integrated into complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-based control and processing electronics to enable an inexpensive whole-body imaging probe [158]. The beamformers of ultrasound imaging are conventionally implemented using FPGA.…”

Diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Regulatory Mechanism of miR-149-3p on Alveolar Inflammatory Factors and Expression of Surfactant Proteins A (SP-A) and D (SP-D) on Lung Surface Mediated by Wnt Pathway

“…Ultrasound is a mature, safe, and noninvasive imaging diagnosis method that can dynamically observe specific lesions and can also guide operations such as needle biopsy, drug perfusion, freezing, and radiofrequency ablation. It shows a good accuracy rate for lung diseases [ 13 – 15 ].…”