Low-Cost 3-D Hydrophone Scanning Tank with MATLAB GUI Control

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Acoustics
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Accurate spatial characterization of ultrasound transducers is crucial for medical applications.
• Commercial automated scanning tanks are effective but expensive, limiting accessibility for many laboratories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a low-cost, open-source hydrophone scanner for characterizing ultrasound transducers.
• To provide a cost-effective and reproducible alternative to commercial scanning systems.

Main Methods:

• The Focused Ultrasound Foundation developed a hydrophone scanner with assembly instructions and a MATLAB GUI.
• The device was built for under $1000 and approximately 40 person-hours.
• Performance was validated by comparing pressure measurements and scan times with a commercial automated scanning tank.

Main Results:

• Pressure measurements showed less than a 10% difference compared to a commercial system.
• Two-dimensional scans (20 x 20 mm at 0.25-mm resolution) took 45 minutes, compared to 30 minutes for the commercial system.
• Reproducibility studies demonstrated low coefficients of variation for peak negative pressure measurements (1.88% for focused, 0.98% for planar transducers).

Conclusions:

• The developed low-cost hydrophone scanner is a viable and accurate tool for ultrasound transducer characterization.
• This open-source device lowers the barrier to entry for laboratories requiring transducer performance analysis.
• The scanner provides efficient and reproducible spatial characterization of ultrasound transducers.