A low-cost, arduino-like dev-kit for single-element ultrasound imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, open-source, Arduino-like hardware kit for single-element ultrasound imaging, enabling accessible experimentation for a wide range of users without specialized equipment.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, complete, single-channel analog front-end system using open-source modules, facilitating affordable ultrasound imaging at home or in educational settings.

Findings

Successfully tested with repurposed ultrasound and medical transducers

Produced usable ultrasound images with low-cost hardware

Demonstrated versatility for RF and non-destructive testing applications

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is developing an open-source ecosystem, especially for software frameworks. Little exists on the open-hardware side. Hence a focus was put on producing easy-to-use technological (hardware and software) kit to allow anyone - scientists, academics, hackers, makers to have a experimental setup for ultrasound imaging at a low cost, at home, with no specific equipment required. To this end, open source, arduino-like modules have been developed to build a simple, but complete, single channel analog front-end system, where all intermediary signals are readily accessible by the user. A single-channel architecture allows to avoid the beam-forming head, though it limits the quality of the image obtained, and brings robustness to the system. Moreover, complex RF processing, being shifted to the analog side, limits the quality of the final image. These were tested with re-purposed ultrasound mechanical scanner heads, as well as re-purposed medical imaging transducers, and provided interesting images. Moreover, such modules could also be used in RF projects, non-destructive projects, low-cost medical imaging projects.