ULTRASOUND – PART 1

Hi friends!!!

Today we are going to
discuss about ultrasound machine. Ultrasound is a important diagnostic and
therapeutic device in medical field. Therefore it is important for every
healthcare professionals and biomedical engineers to know in detail about
ultrasound.

Let’s get into the topic.

WHAT IS

ULTRASOUND?

Sound generally means what the human ear can hear. All
vibrations including sound waves have frequencies. Frequency means how often
something vibrates per second. So we can call frequency as vibrations per
second. The unit of frequency is Hertz. The human ear can hear frequencies
between 20 Hz to 20000 Hz. Any sound with a frequency above 20000 Hz is called as
Ultrasound. In medical field ultrasound machine uses high frequency sound waves
to produce images of the body.

WHAT IS THE

TECHNOLOGY USED?

Ultrasound works based on the principle called PIEZOELECTRIC EFFECT. Ultrasound transducer has a array of piezoelectric crystals.
When these crystals are accelerated by electric current, the crystal vibrates
and produces high frequency sound waves likewise when sound waves hit the
crystal they produce electric currents. Sound waves from the transducer probe propagate
into the body and tissues. At each tissue plane, a proportion of sound waves is
reflected back and hits the crystal. Again the crystal vibrates and creates the
electric current. This electric current is processed to form the image in the monitor. The same crystal can be used to send and receive sound waves.

HOW DOES ULTRASOUND

CAPTURE AN IMAGE?

When sound waves
propagate into the body, at the interface of sound waves following reactions may
take place.

Absorption: Energy is captured by the tissue and them
converted back to heat

Reflection: Occurs at the interfaces between tissues
of different acoustic properties.

Scattering: Beam hits irregular interface and beam
gets scattered.

Transmission: Sound waves pass through the body
interface.

The amount of reflected or transmitted energy can be
detected and provides information about the size of the reflector. The travel time
of the sound can be measured and this provides information about the distance
that the sound has traveled. The amount of sound waves reflected is plotted
versus the time. It gives information about the size and location of the
reflector (tissue or organ) that reflects the sound.

Let’s take a look
at some examples. Ultrasound will travel through blood in the heart chamber, but
if it hits a heart valve, it will reflect back. It will travel straight through the gallbladder if there are no gallstones, but if there are stones, it will reflect back from them. The denser the object the ultrasound hits, the more of the ultrasound
bounces back.

TRANSDUCER PROBE

The shape of the
probe determines its field of view and the frequency of sound waves produced
determines the penetration depth of sound waves and resolution of the image. High
frequency increases the resolution and decreases the depth of penetration.

The probe also has
a sound absorbing substance called Backing (damping) block layered on
the back of the piezoelectric element to absorb the back reflections from the
probe itself and an acoustic lens to help focus the emitted sound waves.

Probe also has a Matching
layer to minimize the acoustic impedance between the transducer and the
patient. When an ultrasound beam encounters two regions of very different
acoustic impedances, the beam is reflected or absorbed.

Probes can be moved
across the bodies and some probes are designed to be inserted into the various
openings of the body.

WHAT ARE THE TYPES
OF

TRANSDUCER PROBES?

SECTOR SCANNER

Fan shaped beam and
smaller surface required for contact.

LINEAR SCANNER

Rectangular beam
and larger contact area is required.

CURVILINEAR SCANNER

Smaller scan head
and wider field of view.

WHAT ARE THE

CATEGORIES OF

TRANSDUCERS?

Normal Beam: The sound beam is introduced into the body at 90 degrees to the surface.

Angle Beam: The sound beam is introduced into the body at any angles other than 90
degrees.

The selection
between normal beam and angle beam depends upon the selection of the feature of
interest.

Contact Testing: In contact testing a couplent like gel, oil or water is used between
the transducer and body surface.

Immersion testing: Here the body surface and transducer are immersed in a water bath. It
allows better movement of transducers while allowing the consistent coupling.

Single element
transducer: It has only one crystal which acts
both as transmitter and receiver. A way to improve near surface resolution in
single element transducer is to use a delay line. Delay line provides a time
gap between the transmission of sound waves and reception of returning echo’s.

Dual element
transducer: It has two crystals; one acts as a
transmitter and other as a receiver. It has better near surface resolution
because the second transducer does not have to perform transmit function before
receiving the returning echo’s.

 

Now I hope you have
acquired some knowledge about Ultrasound machine. We will see in detail Modes
of ultrasound and artifacts of ultrasound in our next blog.

Please check out for the link below.

ULTRASOUND – PART 2

NOTE: Dear friends!!! … Please do comment a topic related to
Biomedical, so that we can discuss it in future blogs.

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