Grainy ultrasound image

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Kathryn Burton — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 22:03:03 GMT

Thanks everyone; hopefully next week will be less manic so I can have a play with the machine!

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Charlotte Marshall — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 23:50:53 GMT

Ahh the manuals! The manual that came with our machine is not overly helpful. I think it has been poorly translated from the Japanese. I strongly suspect it is just the cheaper machine. Going on courses and finding stuff with the nice big machines in the past it was a big let down when I tried to find everything with our portable machine! The image quality is simply not as good. (Although it is better than the previous machine, a machine really designed for rectaling cows.)

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Emily Rainbow — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 20:41:46 GMT

Has the probe been dropped?

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Rob Loxley — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 15:01:27 GMT

If we might know what model your current and previous machines are, then some comparison of 'inherent' quality differences might be made?

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

ChrisBVSc — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 12:49:33 GMT

Also just another suggestion for your settings, I found with our older "grainy" scanner that increasing the persistence setting made some difference in reducing grain. Don't over do it though otherwise you get a very slow, blurry image.

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

ChrisBVSc — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 12:46:58 GMT

Agree try the suggestions above, but if whatever you do it still seems grainy, then it's probably just a cheaper/more basic machine and unfortunately may be a case of what you see is what you get. Having gone from a basic to a more high end machine in the past year and looked at a few others in the process, the biggest factors in image quality seem to be probe quality and how sophisticated the image processing is inside the machine, both correlating directly with £££.

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Lindsey Edwards — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 10:47:23 GMT

Is the manual and troubleshooting book still available? I know mine has a useful 'what to check' section in it, always helpful as a starting point

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Thomas Johnson — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:06:27 GMT

[quote user="K Burton"]

I've been playing with the ultrasound machine in my new job and found that the image seems very 'grainy' (I don't know the make/model of machine) compared to the machine in my last job (admittedly I was very lucky that was an all singing all dancing top end one). Does anyone have any suggestions for what knobs I could twiddle to improve the image, or is it likely just the difference between the machine price tags?!

[/quote]

Is it on a maintenance contract? When I started at my current practice we got someone from Esaote to come in and talk me through how to use the machine.

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

David Mills — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 01:29:04 GMT

Check the frame rate woud be first step - if there's a function to reduce the field of scan this will do it automatically. Then adjust the focus. Make sure all the time-gain controls are optimised.

Other than that - probably the machine. Lobby for a good one.

RE: Grainy ultrasound image

Michael Woodhouse — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 19:46:10 GMT

If this is over-simplistic - please ignore and don't take offence.

First check the frequency. It is usually variable. Higher frequency gives more detail and less penetration. Check someone's not knocked it down to 3.5MHz - that will give a much more grainy image.

Check the zoom - particularly on lower resolution machines you have the option of zooming in very close - this increases the graininess of the image.

Check the probe is clean, well attached, covered in gel (proper gel not lube), and with a good contact. I wet skin with gel and allow to soak in for a minute or two and then gel the probe. Some probes are harder to get a good contact than others (I remember scanning bitches with the cow linear scanner...).

Then just have a play and change the settings in a dark room. Make sure the screen is clean. Less is often more and you can really only set up the scanner whilst actually scanning something.

Might just be a cheap machine, but you can still get a lot of useful diagnostic information from a basic machine, it just takes a bit more skill and care.

A make and model (and type of probe) would help