Patent ID: 7557489

Claim:
In an ultrasound transducer having transducer material forming a plurality of elements, electrodes on each of the elements, and an acoustically attenuating backing material, an improvement comprising: an integrated circuit embedded in the acoustically attenuating backing material; wherein the acoustically attenuating backing material comprises a plurality of slices, a first one of the slices having the integrated circuit, and the other slices having other integrated circuits, the integrated circuits being in holes of the respective slices such that the integrated circuits are surrounded on at least four sides by the acoustically attenuating backing material of the slices; wherein a plurality of traces within the acoustically attenuating backing material connect the integrated circuit to the electrodes, the plurality of traces corresponding to a respective plurality of elements, the traces of the slices connecting from an element pitch to an integrated circuit input pitch, the element pitch different than the integrated circuit pitch; wherein the integrated circuit comprises at least a portion of a receive beamformer, a sub-array beamformer, a mixer or combinations thereof such that a number of receive traces output at the integrated circuit is less than the number of elements.