Reviews and News on Ultrasound Machines

Color Flow Mode (CFM) is also called as Color Flow Doppler Imaging (CFD). These are the ultrasonic imaging techniques used for measuring the blood flow through the heart. They display the flow data on the 2-D echocardiography image. The technique is mainly used for determining the congenital, valvular and other forms of disease related to heart.

The color flow mode imaging is based on the Doppler Effect of the acoustics. The Doppler Effect helps to find out the blood flow from different parts of the body. It helps to identify the direction of the flow of blood. Color flow mode imaging is understandable to the common user. They avoid the displays of the complex spectral velocity structures.

In the color flow imaging different colors defines the direction of the given jet. The red color and blue colors are taken for defining the direction. The change in the hues from bright to dull depicts the change in the velocities. When there is turbulence in the blood flow a mosaic of colors is formed. Therefore a 2-D display of the blood flow is depicted by the identification of size, velocity and direction.

Red color is used to depict the flow towards the transducer and the blue color is used to depict the flow away from the transducer. Different color references can always be seen in different Doppler Imaging devices. Generally in color flow mode the color bar of black color represents zero flow.

Color flow mode is a very easy and understandable way to study the ultrasonic waves to calculate the blood flow. By making different colors as the codes to measure the flow of blood people can get easily the meaning of the reports generated. These techniques work in the normal hearing range of the humans thus are not harmful for humans.

Mammography machines help analyze breast tissue for possible incidence of cancer and are the choicest tools for guiding breast biopsy procedures. It works by directing a low frequency X-ray through the breast tissue and rendering detailed images for the physician to analyze. The high clarity and definition of these images helps perceive even delicate tissues within the breast. The GE Senographe DMR Mammography Machine is a highly advanced state of the art piece of medical equipment from GE that delivers high performance at affordable costs. GE has been a pioneer in mammography machine manufacturing and over the years has set high industry standards which are rarely matched by competitors.

The machine is very user friendly and has 5 photocells for expansive imaging functionalities in breast placement and digital angulations display. It also provides hands free compression and offers more interaction with the patient by way of vertical height adjustment. The quality of images rendered by a mammography machine is of utmost importance. The high image quality increases the diagnostic capabilities of physicians and the GE Senographe DMR is ahead of the competition in that it delivers high quality images with superb clarity by using dedicated MaxiRay X-ray tube and SharpIQ grid. The MaxiRay bi-metal rhodium or molybdenum tube offers extensive penetration and comes with an inner focusing cone. The high X-ray spectrum provided by these metals penetrates even the densest of breast tissues and reveals details that are obscure in images rendered by other machines.

The unrivalled image quality and magnification provided by this tube sets the machine apart from its competitors. The machine reduces exposure time, which ensures image quality and cuts down dose by 40 percent which allows for examination of dense breasts without reduction in image quality. The anti scatter grid movement is also optimized by the SharpIQ and DMR features which provides high definition images. The machine as with most GE products is consistent and reliable and also ensures automatic optimization of parameters. The digital display, flipping markers and single magnification stand all add to overall design and renders it highly user friendly.

Obstetrics is the special deal of care given to a lady and her child during her period of pregnancy, puerperium and child birth. In the obstetric exercise, the obstetric practitioners look after the pregnant woman on a regular basis to check the growth of the offspring. These obstetrics ensures that there is no ex-novo disease and no other preexisting diseases in the body of the pregnant woman which may possibly affect the baby in future.

Some of the risks which should be seen by an obstetric practitioner are pre-eclampsia, abnormal fetal presentation, abnormal placentation and intrauterine growth restriction. All such risk identification requires some special analysis of the woman on the regular basis. For example to check for pre-eclampsia, albuminuria i.e. the level of urine protein and blood pressure are checked at regular intervals.

In late pregnancies some of the fetal presentations get established like cephalic presentation which involves head first but the baby can be present buttocks first or feet first, transverse or at an oblique presentation. Some of the intrauterine growth restrictions observed by the obstetric practitioners is a general designation in which the offspring is smaller than the expected size, in this case such serious growth symptoms shows a behavior to drop off from the 50 percentile and coming above 10 percentile.

All the calculations are obtained when plotted on a fetal growth chart. Different causes can be extrinsic, relating to the problems apart from the fetus and different causes can be intrinsic, which means relating to the problems of the fetus. An obstetrician needs to check for all types of symptoms to save a child from any of the problems which may arise in future and for the pregnant lady to ensure the successful delivery. Thus for a complete growth of the child obstetrician has a big role to play.

The Ultrasound Transducer is a highly sensitive and technical piece of medical equipment. As with any equipment which comes into contact with a patient, it requires special care and handling.

The most important thing to remember when caring for your transducer is that you must follow your manufacturer’s directions for care and cleaning. If you do not, you run the very real risk not only of irreparably damaging your transducer, but of also voiding your warranty. So step one is, alas, read the manual.

That said, there are some general guidelines for care and safety of ultrasound transducers in general.

1. Properly store transducers when not in use. Most machines have a designated storage place for transducers, such as a dedicated holder.
2. Avoid dropping the transducer, or subjecting it to any kind of impact.
3. Mind the cable. The cable is, in essence, an electrical cord. Unnecessary bending or folding of the cable can damage the cable insulation, which may lead to electrical shock.
4. Always inspect the transducer apparatus, including lens and cable, before each use. If the transducer is damaged, it can cause injury to the patient or operator. If you notice a problem with a transducer, do not use it and contact the manufacturer for service and/or replacement.
5. Use only approved coupling gels to avoid damage to the medical equipment and discomfort for the patient.

Now that you know how to care for your transducer, how about cleaning?

1. Step one is read the manual and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. The importance of this step cannot be overstated.
2. Use the manufacturer’s specified cleaning products and germicides. To do otherwise can damage your equipment and void your warranty.
3. Do not allow the connector end of the cable or transducer to become immersed in the cleaning product.
4. If your transducer must be soaked in germicide, follow the manufacturer’s instructions as to length of soaking time.
5. Steam cleaning, using a heat autoclave or gas process, is generally not recommended.

As long as you follow the proper procedures for transducer care, use and cleaning, your equipment will serve you well, allowing you to better serve your patients.

In the face of modern medical miracles, we have lost sight that it was not that long ago that the idea of open heart surgery was the height of fantasy. Opening a living heart, fixing it, and then reviving the patient was the stuff of dreams.

Now that this is a reality, there became a new wrinkle – how can be know what is going on in the heart before it is laid open? Could we fix abnormalities as we discover them? Fortunately, ultrasound is giving us both of those abilities.

Catheter technology has been around for a while, but that had to be combined with external radiographic techniques to get a picture, and that was at times only a precursor to more invasive procedures like open heart surgery. And, as amazing as that surgery can be, there should be other, less dramatic options.

This used to be the province of external ultrasound machines only. Even catheter based ultrasounds radiated sound in a circle, a good technology for circular structures like the esophagus or arteries. But in order to image a structure with the complex volume of the heart, there had to be something better.

Fortunately, the researchers at Acuson Corporation of Mountain View, CA have developed an intracardiac ultrasound catheter. It will allow surgeons to see the structures within the heart with greater clarity than ever before. They can now precisely determine any affected area. Gone is the radial pattern of the ultrasound. This new sixty four element transducer projects a sideways wave. Normally, there is some form of focusing lens to direct the ultrasound. That would be too big for the tip of this catheter. This new ultrasound transducer has no need of that to maintain a tight focus that is ideal for such a tight area.

This new technology works across a wider range of sound waves. This allows a cardiologist to determine the amount of penetration they need. The upshot of this is that, even if the catheter is on the right side of the heart, you can still visualize the left side just as well. It just depends on where you set the machine.

This new ultrasound machine technique will undoubtedly provide greater diagnostic specificity for cardiac patients, leading to better care and better outcomes.

The good sides of therapeutic ultrasound hide a big problem: these ultrasound machines are large and expensive. Add to that some focusing issues and therapeutic ultrasound shows definite limitations for clinical use for the here and now. That all may have changed.

A doctoral candidate at Cornell University has just set the world of therapeutic ultrasound on its ear. George Lewis has created ultrasound devices that are pocket sized, instead of the current ones that can top out at thirty pounds. These small devices are more powerful than their large predecessors and the cost? Around USD$100. For comparison, that larger ultrasound we mentioned earlier regularly sells in the neighborhood of USD$20,000.

How was this accomplished? Mr. Lewis (remember he’s not a PhD yet) has increased the efficiency of an existing transducer. In the traditional method, a great deal of the energy used to convert the voltage to sound waves is lost. Lewis has created a way to increase the efficiency of this process. In his versions, up to 95% of the source energy goes into the transducer.

This means that his smaller ultrasound transducer can use less power to make the same output, or use the same power to generate a much more powerful output. Lewis envisions small, cell phone sized devices that can cauterize wounds at the scene of the accident, for example. Smaller probes will be able to get closer to tumors, but have the same output as larger probes.

Clinical trials are currently underway. This is significant because it is the first step toward getting approval of the new technology for patient use. The initial work is being done with a form of drug delivery. Hydrogen sulfide, a substance toxic at high doses, is being administered in small doses that are targeted to a particular area by this new small ultrasound unit. This will cut down the toxic risk of a systemic dose of the medication, but increase the effectiveness by localizing the small dose.

These are only the first tentative steps for this novel technology. FDA approval and widespread clinical use is still years ahead, but the avenues for this new therapeutic ultrasound machine are limitless. This innovation will shift not only the use, but the effectiveness and the accessibility, of therapeutic ultrasound.

The ultrasound transducer is a highly sensitive and technical piece of medical equipment. As with any equipment which comes into contact with a patient, it requires special care and handling.

The most important thing to remember when caring for your ultrasound transducer is that you must follow your manufacturer’s directions for care and cleaning. If you do not, you run the very real risk not only of irreparably damaging your transducer, but of also voiding your warranty. So step one is, alas, read the manual.

That said, there are some general guidelines for care and safety of transducers in general.

1. Properly store transducers when not in use. Most machines have a designated storage place for transducers, such as a dedicated holder.
2. Avoid dropping the ultrasound transducer or subjecting it to any kind of impact.
3. Mind the cable. The cable is, in essence, an electrical cord. Unnecessary bending or folding of the cable can damage the cable insulation, which may lead to electrical shock.
4. Always inspect the transducer apparatus, including lens and cable, before each use. If the transducer is damaged, it can cause injury to the patient or operator. If you notice a problem with a transducer, do not use it and contact the manufacturer for service and/or replacement.
5. Use only approved coupling gels to avoid damage to the equipment and discomfort for the patient.

Now that you know how to care for your transducer, how about cleaning?

1. Step one is read the manual and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. The importance of this step cannot be overstated.
2. Use the manufacturer’s specified cleaning products and germicides. To do otherwise can damage your equipment and void your warranty.
3. Do not allow the connector end of the cable or transducer to become immersed in the cleaning product.
4. If your transducer must be soaked in germicide, follow the manufacturer’s instructions as to length of soaking time.
5. Steam cleaning, using a heat autoclave or gas process, is generally not recommended.

As long as you follow the proper procedures for ultrasound transducer care, use and cleaning, your equipment will serve you well, allowing you to better serve your patients.

Real-time data on a pregnant mother and her unborn child during the course of labor was a pressing need in obstetrical science. Ultrasound came to the rescue with the development of external fetal monitors. The all-encompassing term for this type of monitoring is cardiotocography, or CTG. This refers to the fact that not one, but two pieces of data are being collected. In simple terms, the CTG is recording the fetal heartbeat and the rate of uterine contractions. These factors, when taken together, are a good indicator of how the fetus is handling the stress of labor.

There are two ultrasound transducers used in fetal monitoring, one for the fetal heart rate and the other for the contractions themselves. External monitoring is accomplished by strapping the transducing sensors to the abdomen of the pregnant mother. The heart sensor is based on Doppler methodology. The contraction transducer is a pressure sensor and measures the tension of the abdominal wall which is an indirect indicator of intrauterine pressure.

CTG must consider several factors, namely uterine contractions and all four features of fetal heart rate:

*the baseline heart rate,
*variability or changes over time,
*accelerations over time, and
*decelerations over time.

Before interpretation can begin, risk factors must be defined. They will influence the decision-making process. For example, the decision to proceed to a surgical intervention or cesarean section might be made more quickly if the patient is at higher risk for an adverse outcome.

Historically, this suite of data has been classified as “reassuring” or “non-reassuring.” Deemed not descriptive enough, these two classifications have been supplanted by these new categories.

*Category I (normal) – the tracing of all findings are indicative of normal status and labor can be allowed to proceed using standard procedures.
*Category II (indeterminate) – the tracing of all findings are not indicative of normal status but do not rise to the level that requires immediate intervention. Continued monitoring is indicated and more re-evaluations are necessary.
*Category III (abnormal) – some part of the findings indicate an abnormal status such as fetal distress that requires prompt evaluation and management, inducing but not limited to direct intervention such as a cesarean section.