Tablet Ultrasound Engine With Stacked Chips and Touch Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional medical ultrasound imaging equipment is bulky and difficult to maintain sterility, especially in portable settings, and often requires complex user interfaces like keyboards and knobs that are hard to clean and use.
Innovation Solution
A tablet-form factor medical ultrasound system with a multi-touch touchscreen for gesture-based control, incorporating a vertically stacked multi-chip module for ultrasound engine components, allowing for compact design and easy cleaning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional keyboards and knobs are used for user input, then control functionality is provided, but the equipment becomes bulky and difficult to keep clean
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces mechanical keyboards and knobs with a touch screen display that detects touches through capacitive or resistive sensing. This substitution eliminates physical mechanical components that are difficult to clean and bulky, while providing the same user input control functionality through graphical interface elements on the display surface.
Solution Approach 2:
The touch screen display serves multiple functions: it displays ultrasound images and simultaneously serves as the input interface for user control. This multi-functionality eliminates the need for separate keyboards and knobs, reducing overall device complexity and improving ease of cleaning while maintaining full control capability.
2Ease of operation
If conventional keyboards and knobs are used, then user input is possible, but the equipment is difficult to maintain sterility in hospital environments
Solution Approach 1:
By replacing mechanical keyboards and knobs with a touch screen interface, the patent eliminates crevices, buttons, and moving parts that can harbor bacteria and are difficult to sterilize. The smooth, sealed surface of the touch screen can be easily wiped down and maintained in sterile conditions, while still providing full user input capability through touch gestures.
3Adaptability or versatility
If touch screen technology is incorporated with traditional keyboard and knob, then partial user input interface is provided, but the equipment becomes complicated to use and difficult to keep clean
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the display function and input interface function into a single integrated touch screen display. Instead of having separate keyboards, knobs, and display screens, all controls are overlaid directly on the display surface as graphical elements that respond to touches. This integration simplifies the user interface to a single clean surface that is both versatile and easy to maintain.
Data Source
AI summary
Exemplary embodiments provide systems and methods for portable medical ultrasound imaging. Certain embodiments provide a multi-chip module for an ultrasound engine of a portable medical ultrasound imaging system, in which a transmit/receive chip, an amplifier chip and a beamformer chip are assembled in a vertically stacked configuration. Exemplary embodiments also provide an ultrasound engine circuit board including one or more multi-chip modules, and a portable medical ultrasound imaging system including an ultrasound engine circuit board with one or more multi-chip modules. Exemplary embodiments also provide methods for fabricating and assembling multi-chip modules as taught herein. A single circuit board of an ultrasound engine with one or more multi-chip modules may include 16 to 128 channels in some embodiments. Due to the vertical stacking arrangement of the multi-chip modules, a 128-channel ultrasound engine circuit board can be assembled within exemplary planar dimensions of about 10 cm×about 10 cm.