Miniaturization of Ultrasound Scanners

摘要

In its nearly 50-year history, ultrasound scanner design has changed dramatically with variations in clinical capability and with the technologies available for achieving that capability. There have been transitions from manual scanning to mechanical and electronic scanning and from bistable black and white images to full gray scale images with electronic scan converters and the migration to digital hardware and to software-based systems. The last decade has seen the increasing conversion of scanner hardware to software, run in either personal computers (PCs) or in digital signal processors. This article reviews most of these developments and tries to anticipate the clinical role of ultrasound scanning in the context of the current trends of development.