ATL revamps probe family with HDI

ATL refurbished all of the scanheads on its Ultramark 9 ultrasoundscanner as part of its high-definition imaging (HDI) upgrade introducedlast month. Each HDI transducer has been designed to use the vendor'sbroad bandwith technology, which allows for signal generationand acquisition over a wide frequency range (SCAN 4/24/91).

Probes available for use with the UM9 HDI scanner include wide-aperturephased arrays, curved linear arrays and high-frequency lineararrays, said Allen W. Guisinger, executive vice president.

ATL offered a phased-array probe with the older UM9. But theswitch to 128 channels from 48 enabled the vendor to expand froma narrow-channel to wide-aperture phased array with the HDI upgrade,he said.

The field of view was also widened--to 160´--on the UM9'scurved-array intravaginal transducer. This wider picture providesa significant advantage in ob/gyn diagnosis, said Dr. KennethJ.W. Taylor, chief of ultrasound at Yale University in New Haven.

"You can orient yourself much better (using the curved-arraytransvaginal transducer). You see much more of the pelvis andview the ovaries and uterus at the same time," Taylor said.

Other advances in the HDI upgrade include improved color-flowDoppler sensitivity and greater resolution with the high-frequencyL10-5 linear array, Taylor said. The broad bandwidth transducertechnology picks up more information close to the transducer,while high-frequency 10-MHz imaging improves resolution and scanningpenetration, he said.

ATL also made changes in the UM9 scanhead connector board,Guisinger said. The HDI system uses three universal connectorsthat accept all of the HDI scanheads. This allows the user toelectronically switch back and forth between all the probes, hesaid.