MU and STMicroelectronics collaborate to develop miniature ultrasound diagnostics

     MU, a medical device manufacturer, and STMicroelectronics, a leading global semiconductor supplier across multiple electronic applications, jointly announced that MU's US-304 portable ultrasonic imaging diagnostic instrument is powered by ST's STHV800 pulser pulse generator. Greatly improve the quality of medical services in remote rural areas of Africa.

     The MU Portable diagnostic device is designed to support the "Doctor Car" mobile office project to provide medical services in remote rural areas of Africa. In this project, health workers use a special vehicle equipped with a telemedicine system to provide medical diagnosis services to residents in remote rural areas that lack medical facilities. The data obtained by the portable ultrasonic diagnostic instrument is sent to the medical center in the big city through the mobile network, for detailed medical diagnosis, and to assist the medical staff to determine the reasonable treatment plan. MU will provide ultrasound imaging diagnostics for emergency vehicles and medical stations in Africa starting in 2016.

     The MUUS-304 is a convex ultrasound imaging diagnostic device (3.5MHz) capable of diagnosing the area of 15cm under the abdomen, which can be carried anywhere and can be connected to a laptop or tablet with a single USB cable. The MU ultrasonic diagnostic instrument integrates ST's high-voltage and high-speed ultrasonic pulse generator chips and an 8-channel transmitter driver circuit [1], using ST's unique 200V SOI-BCD[2] semiconductor manufacturing process, which integrates high-voltage CMOS technology, precise analog circuits, and robust power levels in a single chip.

     As the most integrated ultrasonic pulse generator on the market, ST's STHV800 has low noise, small size, accurate diagnostic images, and far lower cost and power consumption than stationary ultrasonic diagnostic equipment.

     Yasuhiro Tamura, President of MU Corporation, said, "Achieving high portability and low cost without sacrificing performance was a challenge in developing ultrasound diagnostics for medical stations. St's technology is the best way to solve this problem. As we deepen our collaboration with ST to develop medical equipment for medical stations in developing regions, we hope to expand our target applications to new areas, including animal health."

     Hiroshi Noguchi, Director of Analog, MEMS and Sensor Products at ST Japan, said: "MU's latest portable ultrasound diagnostics will improve the quality of medical diagnostics in remote rural areas, where there is a high demand for such devices. The selection of our technology is another testament to our commitment to provide ultrasound diagnostic equipment manufacturers with the highest performance chips on the market, to be a reliable partner for application innovation, and to positively contribute to improving people's health and quality of life."

     ST also offers affordable integrated STHV800 pulse generator chips and evaluation boards for STM32F4 ARM® Cortex-M microcontrollers (STEVAL-IME013V1). The graphical user interface and preset waveforms of the evaluation board help simplify the testing process of the pulse generator under different conditions.