Abstract: Many consider high frequency ultrasonic imaging to be the next frontier in ultrasound. It has a wide range of clinical applications, from imaging the eye and skin to imaging small animals. Small animal imaging has recently attracted a lot of attention for testing the efficacy of drugs and gene therapy. Commercial high frequency scanners, also known as "ultrasonic biomicroscopes," or UBMs, all use mechanically scanned single element transducers with frequencies ranging from 30 to 60 MHz and frame rates of 30 frames per second or less. High frequency linear arrays and imaging systems in the 20-50 MHz range have been developed to address problems with UBMs such as mechanical motion and fixed focusing. Current efforts in the development of high frequency ultrasonic imaging will be reviewed in this paper, and potential biomedical applications will be discussed.

Keywords: high-frequency ultrasound transducer; pre-matching circuit; ultrasound instrument