Knobology

When it comes to ultrasound machines, you will see them as this one here. On the side, there are 3 probes, they have different functions. When the probes are not in use, they should be hung nicely on the side like you see in the video. To turn on the machine, press the button labeled "power". It will turn green and you need to wait similar to a PC for the screens to come up. 

When the machine is up and running, an image will appear on the touch screen here, and on the screen above you will see the ultrasound imaging. On the touch screen, you will be able to choose between the different probes. Now it is on the abdomen probe, this is the cardio probe, and this is the so-called small parts probe for blood vessels and surface structures, like superficial muscles and tendons. 

If you press on model, you will see these options here, abdomen. You can press on the cardio probe, and see options adult, pediatric, and surface. In model you will be able to choose between different models: abdomen, obstetrics, gynecology, cardiology, pediatrics, vascular, small-parts, urology. 

Further down you see 3 buttons on the board here, that you will use quite a bit. There is one called "B", one called "CF", and one called "PW", and in cardiology a bit of "M". On the side here there are a row of small buttons that you can slide side to side. Let them stay in the middle like the factory setting. It is called time-gain compensation. You can increase the gain, the energy transmitted, by sliding one. It can be relevant for patients that need more energy to see deeper. 

If you press on "B", you will see the standard layout for the selected probe. B-mode is the usual grey, white, black imaging. If you turn the B-button towards the right, clock-wise, the gain will increase in the image, and counter clock-wise, the gain will decrease. Do not use too much gain, if you use too little everything will be black, if you use too much it will be too white with too many artefacts. 

CF gives a color image, you can see the color scale and everything that moves will be colored. Ideally, the arteries will be red and the veins blue, but the color is dependent on the direction towards or away from the probe so it can be changed easily. 

If you press on the button called "PW", you enter the Pulse-Wave mode where you can measure the speed of objects in motion. You get a Doppler, with Doppler measurements, and the little cursor in Doppler can be moved by rolling around this ball. If you move up here, you will be able to change the cursor to display direction, and here you can change the baseline, if you need more space for the baseline. So it is 2 and 4 you will use here. 

If you exit PW and go back to PDI, Power Doppler Imaging, it is a very sensitive method to only find movements. It can be used to find kidney transplant perfusion. If you press once more, you exit. 

This button here functions like an enter button on the PC. If you place the cursor somewhere, here, and press enter, for example in measure. You can press measure here, you can then move the cursor around and press enter to select and one more time to get the measure. If you only want the cursor, you can click this cursor button, and a cursor will appear that can be moved around the screen. To exit, press multiple times on the button. If you press "B", you will exit all the screens. 

You will never use this keyboard to enter a patient name and annotate images, that is not your task. Up here there is a help program. It says REF, then you press acknowledge on which you want each time, then the enter button. Then you will see options for programs you can view for each probe. For example, 4-chamber view of the heart that comes up now. If you go all the way to the right, there is a button labeled "depth", if you push it upwards, you will come closer, as in there is less depth. If you push it downwards, you will go deeper in the image. If you twist it, you will zoom in around the middle of the image. So the button can be used for zoom or depth. Pushing it up or down will be the most useful. 

If we go back to the display here and press, for example abdomen probe, you will see this image. We get, for example here, general abdomen, all the settings come up automatically that the machine is set on. The helping programs under REF also appear. Press here, in here it says upper abdomen. If we continue on here, we can select which program we want, we can see an anatomic model. If you press this one we can see an image of what the ultrasound should depict. 

When you want to exit the software and are finished with the machine, you can press the power button. You will see what is written here, click ok. Click close and the machine will turn off.