The early diagnosis of liver diseases and/or the identification of any focal lesions are the key issues in considering a favorable prognosis. These objectives require non-invasive dedicated diagnostic tools and justify the development of innovative techniques. The BBMUT project aims to exploit the properties of a new technology of ultrasound probes, called CMUT to propose new techniques for imaging and characterization of liver tissue.

This paper is mainly focused on the description of the techniques developed in the frame of the project and evaluated with piezoelectric probes.

Innovative imaging techniques based on composite signal emission, specific apodizations or different bias voltage in the case of a CMUT probe have been implemented and are presented in this paper, investigating three different axes:

– A native image with improved contrast without degrading the resolution can be provided by using the multitaper approach;

– In view to overcome the nonlinear behavior of a CMUT probe, a multi-pulse emission technique has been developed using different bias voltages;

– The large frequency bandwidth expected for the CMUT probe is used to evaluate tissue characterization techniques based on spectral or statistical approaches.