Linear power control for ultrasonic probe with tuned reactance

Abstract

There is disclosed herein a driver system for an ultrasonic probe for allowing a user to have proportional control of the power dissipated in the probe in accordance with the position of power dissipation controls operable by the user and for automatically tuning upon user request such that the driving frequency is equal to the mechanical resonant frequency of said probe and such that the reactive component of the load impedance represented by said probe is tuned out. The system uses a tunable inductor in series with the piezoelectric crystal excitation transducer in the probe which has a flux modulation coil. The bias current through this flux modulation coil is controlled by the system. It is controlled such that the inductance of the tunable inductor cancels out the capacitive reactance of the load impedance presented by the probe when the probe is being driven by a driving signal which matches the mechanical resonance frequency of the probe. The resulting overall load impedance is substantially purely resistive. The system measures the phase angle and monitors the load current. This information is used to determine the mechanical resonance frequency by sweeping through a band of driving frequencies and finding the peak load current where the slope of the load current versus frequency function is greater than a predetermined constant. After the automatic tuning to the resonant frequency, the system automatically adjusts the bias current flowing through the flux modulation coil to maintain the substantially purely resistive load impedance for changing power levels. There is also disclosed herein an analog circuit to measure the Phase angle for the load driving signal and to adjust the frequency of the driving signal for best performance. This system includes an integrator to eliminate the effect of offset errors caused by operational amplifiers.