Transducer Prototyping

The Sonix RP provides a method for setting up transducers by specifying element count, pitch, radius, etc. This can be useful when prototyping new probes. The Ultrasonix probe pin-out can be found online at the research forum http://research.ultrasonix.com. The Setup.exe application, which comes provided with the Sonix RP contains the functionality to add new transducers through a simple setup screen. To access the screen, start Setup.exe and choose Probe Setup from the Main menu. Below is an example of the probe setup screen. Note that this program makes changes to the probes.lst file.



The new transducer can take the parameters of an existing one by ensuring that the Add button is clicked once an existing probe has been selected from the list. The unique parameters that should be different from other probes include the Name and the Code of the probe. Once all of the other information has been entered, click on Apply Changes. To store permanently to file, click on Save & Exit. To configure the transducer for imaging, select the newly created probe and click on Configure for Imaging. An existing transducer will have to be chosen to base the imaging parameters from; once this is done, a master preset for the probe and parameter ranges specific for the new probe will be created. Note that the adjustment of values and ranges of parameters such as frequency, depth, etc. will still need to be done manually. Once this has been done, the research software can be run, and given that the probe connector has the code pins matching the code entered in the software, it should show up in the probe menu on the touchscreen. After selecting the transducer, the master preset will be loaded; other specialized presets can be created afterward.