Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers for Blood Vessel Motion Tracking

In this paper, a 5 MHz 1.5 × 1.5 mm
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piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) array with 2 mm beam width and 5 mm penetration depth is designed to measure the dynamics of the radial artery. Single line ultrasonic pulse echo measurements with high time resolution, also called M-mode ultrasound imaging, are demonstrated to obtain radial artery dynamics to derive cardiovascular system bio-markers such as heart rate and artery diameter change. The extracted radial artery diameter change waveform is consistent with what is reported in the literature and captures the key arterial pulse waveform components including systolic upstroke, systolic decline, dicrotic notch, and diastolic runoff. This demonstrates the great potential of custom-designed PMUT arrays for continuous cardiovascular system monitoring.