Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi and low-cost hardware

Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by leggomylibro on Thursday July 27, 2017 @07:03PM (#14870498)

Ah, that makes a lot of sense - I was trying to find information on how ultrasound machines worked awhile ago, and most of the information I found just said that a ceramic piezo is used to emit the sound and measure the time until it returned. I could not fathom at the time what kind of math must be required to get a 2D image out of a single data point like that, and I couldn't find much elaboration on the subject.

But if it's just a few hundred piezos in an array, now THAT makes a lot more sense.

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Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by taneq on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:51AM (#14873541)

It's not an array of piezos (or at least, not a one-per-column array of transducers). It's a phased array which they use to rapidly scan the volume, iirc something like 32 emitters and a single receiver in a commercial unit.

Source: I looked into building one last time we had a baby but didn't get around to it.

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Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by tyingq on Thursday July 27, 2017 @08:05PM (#14870902)

Yep. Array is the keyword that makes it easier to Google...phased arrays, curved arrays, etc. And of course, with a bunch of piezos, your signal processing problem is larger.

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Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by kelu124 on Friday July 28, 2017 @03:32AM (#14872619)

The point being that on these experiments, the sensor isn't an array of piezos, rather a single-element piezo. Cuts the costs (a fab invoices around 100-200e for such a sensor), but lowers the overall image quality.

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Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by amelius on Friday July 28, 2017 @05:17AM (#14872988)

I wonder if two sensors placed at a distance can make a huge difference, and how/if the image quality converges as you increase sensors.

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Re:Show HN: Hacking an ultrasound probe with a Raspberry Pi ... by kelu124 on Friday July 28, 2017 @08:25AM (#14873699)

One of the next experiment is to try with 8 small elements ;)

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