• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.264-273
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• 2015

Improvement of the radiation beam profile of a medical ultrasonic transducer has been researched in this paper. In order to improve the beam profile, a new transducer structure has been devised that includes both a shaded electrode and a multi-focus lens. For a linear sound source, the beam profile was investigated through finite element analysis, and then the optimal design of the devised structure was carried out by considering such performances as sidelobe level, focal range and beamwidth simultaneously. In the process, the optimal dimension of the devised structure was derived by using the ratio of the focal range to the minimum beamwidth as a performance index. As a result, the beam profile has been improved to have a lower sidelobe level at -20.2 dB and a consistent narrow beamwidth from 30 mm to 160 mm depth with the minimum beamwidth at 2.04 mm. Further, a prototype transducer was fabricated to have the devised structure, and its performance was measured and compared with the analysis results to confirm the validity of the devised transducer structure.