Initial pulse-echo imaging results with one-dimensional capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays

In this paper, the first experimental results of pulse-echo imaging employing a 1-D capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer array are presented. A 1-D array consisting of 16 elements is used in the experiment. A wire phantom consisting of seven steel wires immersed in vegetable oil is used as the imaging target. A B-scan image with a sector angle of 90 degrees and an image depth of 150 mm is reconstructed by employing RF beamforming and synthetic phase array approaches. The reconstructed image is displayed at different display dynamic ranges. The measured near and far side lobe levels are around /spl sim/25 dB and /spl sim/35 dB, respectively. The noise floor of the image is below /spl sim/50 dB.