Design and development of a 3D ultrasound phantom scanner

A 3D Ultrasound (US) phantom scanning device has been developed to provide calibration data for image processing and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as part of a study into the biomechanical status of diseased arteries in vivo. The cartesian scanning system moves a conventional US probe from a Philips HDI5000 US scanner over the upper surface of the phantom. The device can scan phantoms of up to 150 mm long and 75 mm wide. The transducer can be rotated about two axes and translated in one axis manually. X and Y planar movements are made automatically. Control is provided by a labVIEW based control program and a Parker L25i stepper motor driver system. scalar and rotary positional accuracies are /spl plusmn/50/spl mu/m and /spl plusmn/0.1/spl deg/ respectively.