DUS, digital ultrasonography

Purpose and goal:

The goal is to develop a thin ultrasound sensor that can be placed on the finger to combine sensation with 2D ultrasound. The project is a collaboration between Umeå University, Luleå University of Technology and the Rural Medical Center. The sensor is intended to be cheap and easy to handle, to be used in rural areas.

A high-performance, scalable transmitter and receiver circuit has been designed, built in discrete components for one channel and tested at lab scale. The results will lead to miniaturization of the circuit and upscaling to 32 channels to adapt to a former developed PVDF sensor Expected results and effects:

The results of the project show that it is possible to manufacture a thin multi-element ultrasound sensor for placement on a finger and that electronics for sending and receiving can be made multi-channel and miniaturized so that sending and receiving electronics can be placed close to the ultrasound sensor. The technology show that 2D imaging can be combined with sensing to provide more dimensions to a physician during an examination.

Approach and implementation:

The project group consists of personnel from two counties and regions, Västerbottens and Norrbottens, as well as three different parties, Umeå University, Luleå University of Technology and Center for Rural Medicine, Storuman. Technical development and experiments have taken place at Luleå University of Technology, while the different user perspectives as well as possibilities for funding have been discussed at the project meetings that the group have had on a regular basis.