Optimizing Utilization Of Ultrasound: Adjusting Settings

Page Contents

1 OVERVIEW
2 ADJUST BRIGHTNESS SETTINGS
3 PICK YOUR PROBE
4 TRY OUT PRESETS
5 ADJSUT THE GAIN CONTROL
6 ADJSUT THE “TIME GAIN COMPENSATION” (TGC) CONTROLS
7 SETTING THE ULTRASOUND FOCUS POSITION/FOCAL ZONES
8 FURTHER READING

OVERVIEW

This guide is written to try and consolidate suggestions on how to adjust the settings on an ultrasound machine to try and optimize the quality of images that are acquired. Reading the page on the fundamentals of ultrasound studies may be a good primer for this page.

ADJUST BRIGHTNESS SETTINGS

In the beginning it can be an important first step to set the brightness on the ultrasound machine. The goal should be for the bottom of the grey scale bar to be completely black, and for the top of the bar to be white, but not too over-saturated.

PICK YOUR PROBE

There are more then one type of ultrasound probes…

TRY OUT PRESETS

Many machines have their own individual types of presets. It is a good idea to try out different ones to see what might work well for your purposes.

ADJSUT THE GAIN CONTROL

The gain knob is an important setting to know. It will adjust the overall brightness of the image. Gain is responsible for amplifying the signal that is picked up by the ultrasound probe (essentially it amplifies the sound waves that echo back to the probe). The HIGHER this setting is the MORE AMPLIFIED these signals will be. This results in creating an ultrasound image that is brighter (because the strength of each signal increases).

ADJSUT THE “TIME GAIN COMPENSATION” (TGC) CONTROLS

The TGC controls are very similar to the gain control, however they have the extra consideration of time. Threre are multiple settings (one for each time point) that will change how the signal is amplified depending on how long the signal takes to return to the probe (which is a proxy for how far away the object is from the probe).

Generally speaking TGC probes that deal with the region that is close to the probe should be decreased slightly (less signal amplification is needed for nearby structures) and they can be increased for regions that are far away from the probe (further objects may require more signal amplification).