Abstract
An intravascular forward-looking ultrasound probe that is 3 mm in diameter has been developed. We used the probe as acoustic sources and receivers to make an ultrasound forward-looking image, but many artifacts were observed because of the strong directivity of the probe. For decreasing the directivity of the probe, a convex-shaped 1-3 composite PZT transducer, which is 0.7 mm in diameter and has a curvature radius of 0.75 mm, was fabricated and a low directivity feature was confirmed. A probe which has eight separated 1-3 composite convex-shaped transducers was fabricated. The probe is 3 mm in diameter and has a working channel that is 0.5 mm in diameter. Images of a single 0.6 mm width steel square rod and a pair of 0.4 mm width steel square rods separated by 0.8 mm were constructed using the fabricated probe.
