Shielding of piezoelectric ultrasonic probes in Hall effect imaging.

This paper addresses significant sources of electromagnetic noise in Hall effect imaging. Hall effect imaging employs large electrical pulses for signal generation and high sensitivity ultrasonic probes for signal reception. Coherent noise arises through various coupling mechanisms between the excitation pulse and the probe. In this paper, the coupling mechanisms are experimentally isolated and theoretically analyzed. Several methods of shielding the probe from electromagnetic interference are devised and tested. These methods are able to reduce the noise to levels below the random thermal noise, thereby improving the signal-to-noise ratio in HEI by two orders of magnitude.