Blinded Comparison between an In-Air Reverberation Method and an Electronic Probe Tester in the Detection of Ultrasound Probe Faults

Dudley, N J; Woolley, Darren J.

doi:10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.08.936

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As the QA protocol presented in this study does not call for profound technical US skills, it could quite easily be incorporated into a daily QA programme using visual inspection of in-air reverberation patterns, as suggested by Dudley and Wooley. 15 Thus, functioning as a secondary tool for defect validation hereby optimizing early defect detection and possibly reducing time consumption.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This includes compounding, beam steering, and harmonics possibly masking defects in the reverberation image. 15 Care should also be taken when assessing in-air reverberation images acquired from multirow array transducers, given that minor element failure may not present as clear disuniformities in the in-air image analysis. Thus, multirow transducers present a challenge in the QA protocol.…”

Section: Study Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Five-year evaluation of a low-cost quality assurance protocol for clinical ultrasound transducers

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: To implement, execute and evaluate a quality assurance test protocol for clinical ultrasound transducers that is software-based, user-independent, inexpensive, easily repeatable, and does not require tissue phantoms. Methods: The test protocol is based on in-air reverberation images. The software test tool generates uniformity- and reverberation profiles to monitor system sensitivities and signal uniformities that provide a sensitive analysis of transducer status. Whenever a transducer was suspected to be damaged validating tests were conducted using the Sonora FirstCall test system. A total of 21 transducers from five ultrasound scanner systems were included in the study. Tests were performed every other month for a total of 5 years. Results: Each transducer was tested on average 11.7 times. Testing a transducer required a total of 2.75 hours annually. The ultrasound quality assurance test protocol detected an average annual fail rate of 10.7%. The test protocol provides a reliable approach for monitoring transducer lens status of clinically used ultrasound transducers. Conclusion: The ultrasound quality assurance test protocol may potentially find deviations in diagnostic quality before being noticed by the clinicians. Thus, the ultrasound quality assurance test protocol holds the ability to reduce the risk of undiscovered image quality degradation hereby minimizing the danger of diagnostic errors.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Five-year evaluation of a low-cost quality assurance protocol for clinical ultrasound transducers

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The main purpose of the present study was to evaluate the novel method against another known method, where assessment of the in-air image was chosen. Visual subjective assessment of in-air images for detection of defects has been used in several studies [3][4][5]7,9,17]. The in-air method has also been suggested for computerized evaluation for detection of transducer defects in in-air images [18,19].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When these simple methods were used, 37% of the investigated 219 transducers were found faulty, and for 13% immediate replacement was recommended. The same authors did a blinded comparison between an in-air reverberation method and an electronic probe tester (FirstCall) in the detection of transducer faults [9]. A total of 62 transducers were investigated, of which 28 were detected as faulty with the two methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of an automatic method for detection of defects in linear and curvilinear ultrasound transducers

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The Phantom-based method evaluates the performance of the transducer based on the quality of the image collected on a tissue-mimicking material. The inspected parameters are the homogeneity, penetration depth, beam profile, axial and lateral resolution [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. These methods are based on the transmit-receive response of the transducer performed either in a phantom or water.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling and Experimental Characterization of Bonding Delaminations in Single-Element Ultrasonic Transducer

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ultrasonic transducers performance can be seriously deteriorated by loss of adhesion between some constitutive elements such as the active element, the backing, or the matching layer. In the present work, the influence of bonding delaminations on the performance of a single-element ultrasonic transducer, which is composed of a piezoelectric disk, a backing, and a matching layer, is studied numerically and experimentally. Based on the positions between layers, two cases, i.e., delaminations between ceramic and backing or between ceramic and matching layer, are considered. Each case involves three different types of delaminations, which are marked as delamination type (DT)-I, II, and III. DT-I, a circular shape delamination, starts from the center and expands towards the peripheric zone; DT-II, an annular shape delamination, starts from the peripheric zone and expands towards the center; DT-III is a sector shape delamination with a given angle. The numerical simulations are performed by the finite element method and the influence of delaminations on the electromechanical admittance (EMA) of the transducer is investigated. 3D printed backings and matching layers are mounted on a PZT sample to assemble delaminated single-element transducers. An impedance analyzer is used for experimental measurements. Comparison between numerical and experimental results shows a reasonable agreement making changes in EMA an interesting indicator to inform about the occurrence and severity of delaminations in a single-element ultrasonic transducer.

show abstract

Blinded Comparison between an In-Air Reverberation Method and an Electronic Probe Tester in the Detection of Ultrasound Probe Faults

Cited by 11 publications

References 11 publications

Five-year evaluation of a low-cost quality assurance protocol for clinical ultrasound transducers

Five-year evaluation of a low-cost quality assurance protocol for clinical ultrasound transducers

Evaluation of an automatic method for detection of defects in linear and curvilinear ultrasound transducers

Modeling and Experimental Characterization of Bonding Delaminations in Single-Element Ultrasonic Transducer

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About