Development of Ultrasonic Pulser-Receiver for Bone Density Assessment

Jyoti V Jethe; TS Ananthakrishnan; Aparna S Lakhe; Deepak P Patkar; Rajeev S Parlikar; GD Jindal

Volume : VIII, Issue : IX, September - 2019

Development of Ultrasonic Pulser-Receiver for Bone Density Assessment

Jyoti V Jethe, Ts Ananthakrishnan, Aparna S Lakhe, Deepak P Patkar, Rajeev S Parlikar, Gd Jindal

Abstract :

Osteoporosis is a major health problem affecting millions of people every year, significantly in women after menopause and men over the age of 50 years. It is a deteriorated condition of the bone becoming weak and fragile due to decrease in mineral content such as calcium, resulting into high risk of bone fracture. There are traditional methods for bone mineral density measurement using X–rays. In many recent studies ultrasound method has emerged as a non–invasive method for bone density assessment and has been found to be helpful in mass screening high risk group of subjects. In view of above, a low cost Ultrasonic Pulser–Receiver has been developed comprising four integrated circuit devices and a high voltage MOSFET to be used in transmission mode. Rate generator chip (LM555) followed with a mono–stable chip (LM74121) generates trigger pulses of 2 microsecond duration with a pulse repetition frequency of 200 Hertz. These pulses are used to fire a MOSFET (5N120BND) through a Schmitt trigger chip (MC33151) to generate 600Volt pulses of short duration to excite the ultrasonic transducer. The transmitted ultrasound through the heel of the subject is received by another ultrasonic transducer and amplified using a quad operational amplifier chip (OPA4354). The output signal is captured on a pen–drive through a digital storage oscilloscope for final processing on a personal computer. Hardware development is reported in this paper.