6. Micromachined High Frequency Transducer Arrays

For the medical imaging using single element transducer, the mechanical motion of the transducer is involved in order to achieve the scanning. An alternative solution would be to use the array ultrasound with the electronic scanning. By avoiding the use of moving parts, the arrays are less likely to be hazardous to the patients. Array systems using electronic scanning are able to form an image slice and therefore can achieve higher image frame rates. In addition, the emitted acoustic beam can be steered and dynamically focused in the image plane by the phase delay technique, through which more complicated imaging modality can be conducted.