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Practical applications of ultrasound: getting the best out of your ultrasound machine

Recently, there has been an explosion in the use of ultrasound outside the confines of the conventional imaging department. Many specialties are waking up to the huge potential for focused ultrasound and ultrasound guidance for interventions. Unfortunately, to date, very few formal ultrasound courses are available or accessible to specialist groups. The result is, in some cases, the purchase and use of ultrasound equipment by individuals with little or no training. A good understanding of the basic physics of ultrasound is helpful, but this is of little real value unless the operator can apply this in practice. When faced with a technically challenging examination, users need to be able to fit together their knowledge of underlying principles, an awareness of what each equipment control does and an appreciation of why the scan may be difficult. The aim of this paper is to provide clinicians who are new to ultrasound with an overview of key equipment controls and to indicate how these can be optimized.