Transducer Care

It is highly important to ensure the right precautions are taken when working with ultrasonic transducers. These components can be especially fragile due to the nature of the internal wiring and manufacturing processes involved.

Damage Scenarios
 * Crystals in the array break resulting in holes in the image
 * Wiring becomes loose or gets damaged resulting in shadows in the image
 * Lens starts to delaminate resulting in poor image quality or shadows in the image

Physical Abuse
 * Do not drop transducers. The probe head and the connector are especially fragile.
 * Do not run over the cabling, this may damage wires.

Cleaning
 * Try to use water or T-spray when possible, Cidex is a powerful cleanser and may deteriorate transducer materials more rapidly
 * Wipe off gels after transducer use

Experimentation
 * When placing transducer in water, do not keep in longer than 3 hours, and try not to dip transducer head fully into water so the cabling becomes wet as well
 * If transducer needs to be in water for longer than 3 hours, use a probe sleeve with gel inside to gain coupling
 * When using a shaker to vibrate transducer, try not to exceed 20G

Imaging
 * If increasing the PRF to high values, ensure to lower the voltage levels to minimum to ensure lens does not burn. This precaution also needs to be taken for patient safety
 * Limit the amount of time scanning at higher output levels. For example high PRF's or transmissions with long duration pulses

Laboratory Logistics
 * Because many students may be using a single system in the lab and it may be moved to different locations, the lab may want to setup a location to sign out transducers as to keep track of what is being used where and for what projects