The ultrasonic probe for the investigating of internal object structure by ultrasound transmission tomography

The main component of every device used for investigating internal object structure by Ultrasound Transmission Tomography (UTT) is a special ultrasonic probe. This paper presents the structure of model multielement ring probe for examining objects using this method in divergent ray projection geometry. The probe is made up of 1024 rectangular separate piezoelectric transducers working at frequency f=1.7 MHz, placed inside a ring with diameter D=30 cm and height h=9 cm. Each element of the probe is equipped with a quarter-wave matching layer. All the transducers function as transmitters and receivers, and can be joined in groups both during transmitting and during receiving. Some examples of admittance characteristics of a single piezoelectric transducer and examples of shapes of pulses generated and received by particular transducers were presented. Important factors affecting the measurement resolution are the sizes of the active surface of the transducers.