Faten Ibrahim

“I am a Pulse”

We have all been touched by the story of Finding Nemo. Marlin is a clown fish

who is very overprotective of his son, Nemo. He will not let Nemo swim past the reef fearing he

will lose Nemo after losing his wife, Coral, and all but one of their eggs from an attack by a

barracuda. From the attack, Nemo’s egg was damaged, and Nemo had one small fin, giving

Nemo a challenge to learn how to swim. Although he had a small fin, Nemo was brave and loved

to adventure. Nemo tests his dad to prove he isn’t afraid of the unknown ocean but gets caught

by a scuba diver. Marlin is forced to swim into the ocean to find his beloved Nemo with the help

of a bluefish he met named Dory who has short term memory loss. Marlin and Dory swim across

the ocean to find Nemo and bring him back to the reef but encounter sharks, jellyfish, and sea

turtles along the way. Marlin wouldn’t let Nemo go on any adventures. Nemo hated being

trapped and not able to explore the ocean. Marlin blames himself because he felt like Nemo’s

actions were due to him being overprotective.

I sometimes feel the same way as Nemo does, having to live a structured routine and not

able to explore far past my directed beam. My name is Kristy by the way; I am a pulse created by

a man-made piezoelectric crystal made of lead zirconate titanate, living inside a transducer (a

device that converts energy from one form to another), my forever home. The only adventure I

ever go on is when I leave the transducer to travel into a human’s body and need to come right

back when I pass the focal zone due to divergence of the beam. I want to go out and be free,

swim through tissues and see different things, come back home when I want to, not when I get

tired from attenuation. The unknown doesn’t scare me, but my mom makes me come right back.

I can’t ever adventure past my directed beam. I can’t get much information past the focal zone
because of beam divergence, so my adventure is real short when the focal point isn’t where it

should be. At least Nemo finally got to go deep into the ocean and explore for a while, even

though it started out scary. He got taken far across the ocean and had to learn there was more

than just his community by the reef. I need to figure out a way to last longer into the human body

and hope I get an operator who uses multiple focal points, where the beams are the narrowest, so

me and my friends can travel at different points and provide a better image. Maybe my mom will

stop worrying so much and let me adventure out more often with my friends if my friends and I

worked in a step-down sequence, where I traveled with groups of pulses fired from groups of

crystals sequentially to lengthen near-field depth, increase scan lines and provide better lateral

resolution. I would love to spend more time with my friends as we work as a team to provide

better diagnostic images!

Ultrasound uses high frequency sound waves higher than humans can hear (greater than

20 kHz). The velocity of a sound wave depends on the medium it is going through. I don’t like to

go through air or water because it slows me down. Going through bone is a blast because bone

has high bulk modulus. It can travel on high speed, it’s like being on a racetrack! The average

speed that I travel in soft tissue is 1540 m/s. If only I can travel so far with that speed. But it all

depends on the acoustic impendence mismatch, and things like focal zone and beam width. I just

get so tired, and my purpose is to collect as much information as I can to help other crystals in

my group like my mom and friends to display data on the screen and get diagnostic images.

Obviously, I can’t change some things like how my home was built, with fixed or mechanical

focusing from the lens or a curved crystal, but if I have a good operator who knows how to use

frequency, focal zones, TGC’s, and depth I can travel so far. But does a pulse always get that

lucky, nope. And to top it off, gas or bowel could get into our way. Some operators forget to
move their focal points to adjust how far I can travel to get good information and boy does that

waste my time! Nemo wanted his dad to relax and let him be a kid, but after Marlin went through

the attack on his family, it changed him forever. Nemo, just like me had no control on adventures

either. But we can help teach everyone around us the importance of exploring. Or in my case the

use of operator controls, if we work together, we can travel so far.

Let me begin by explaining how I am created and about my home that helps me travel

into the human body to receive information and back to the transducer to display the information

on the ultrasound monitor. My home is different from Nemo’s home; his is full of beautiful coral

reefs and different species of fish that live in a small part of the ocean. My home is all man-

made, simple and very structured. There are other crystals that create pulses just like me to travel

out into the body to receive information. The crystals are heated above the Curie temperature and

it’s so funny to me because they get excited and vibrate back and forth when positive and

negative charges are applied, causing the crystals to expand and contract. Every time my crystal

gets excited, even if I’m napping, it’s time for me to wake up and adventure off. The biggest fear

for a crystal and for us is if the operator autoclaves the transducer (our home). This will murder

the crystals, and our home becomes useless. My home also has a backing layer to stop the

ringing of the crystal. This will give me the time to return an echo. If the crystal isn’t suppressed,

then they can’t listen for me to return the echo. I’m telling you these crystals get over excited,

but luckily, I have a backing layer so they can actually listen to me to get a good image. I live in

a pulse wave transducer, so I am a short pulse that improves axial resolution for more accurate

images. There is also a matching layer in my home; this is placed in front of the crystal to reduce

the acoustic impedance between the transducer and tissue to enhance my transmission into the

body. And of course, I need that acoustic gel that goes between the transducer and the patient
because without gel the sound waves will be lost due to the large acoustic impedance mismatch

of the different mediums. I need this gel to go in strong; I can’t lose energy from the beginning

or I will never adventure far. Maybe if Nemo had a matching layer between his community and

the ocean his dad wouldn’t feel like the ocean was such a dramatic difference.

The transducer generates sound waves and detects reflected energy. The reflection is the

outcome of the sound wave interactions with the tissues. The energy that is absorbed in the

medium is converted into heat. Attenuation is the weakening of a sound wave due to absorption.

This all depends on the distance it has traveled, composition of a medium, and the frequency of a

sound wave. One way to fix attenuation is to decrease the frequency. If I want to travel at a

further depth, my penetration will decrease as frequency is increased. There is a low reflection

coefficient between two similar tissue and a high reflection coefficient between two different

medias like soft tissue and bone. Scattering is another interaction between sound waves and

tissue that allows me to give internal details of organs. When Marlin and Dory were swimming

in the ocean to find Nemo, they ran into sea turtles that were riding the East Australian Current.

Marlin and Dory could not swim in the current but only flow with it because it was a different

medium than what they swim in. And the deeper they traveled into the ocean the less than can

see. The higher frequency in the current caused more scattering to occur.

After I am fired out from the crystal and interacted with different mediums, I have picked

up the strength of each scan line and need to return to the transducer to convert this information

on the monitor to finish my job. The signals need to process before they are displayed on the

monitor. Signal processing involves rectification which converts negative voltages to positive

voltages, enveloping which forms smoothing, integration which measures the height of the

signal, and rejection which eliminates low level signals for final display. A pulse cannot expect
to throw information then expect a picture without going through a process. When Marlin and

Dory finally found Nemo, Marlin had to explain to Nemo his fears, but he also told Nemo he

should have let him explore the ocean instead of keeping him trapped on their side of the reef.

Before returning home, Marlin and Nemo had a better relationship as they understood each other

more.

Each dot on the multiple scan lines represents location on the monitor. The brighter we

are the stronger signal we got, and the darker we are the weaker signal we got. I am a pulse, and

if my friends and I bring back accurate signals for conversion, we will provide good diagnostic

images for the patient. Scan converters convert my signals from analog to digital, then digital

back to analog. It repeats this process many times per second to create a sequence of frames.

Every digital picture contains pixels. The higher the pixel density provides better spatial

resolution. Bits are the smallest amount of computer memory. The more bits per pixel the more

signals I picked up are available. That means the more shades of gray. Dory had short term

memory loss, she read the address to where Nemo was taken, and she couldn’t remember it until

she saw the words again where Nemo was in trouble. If she had more memory, she would have

helped Marlin find Nemo faster. Just the way the more bits per pixel the computer memory had,

there was better contrast resolution. Finally, after being fired out of an excited crystal, sent

through the matching layer, shortened by the damping layer, and with the help the acoustic gel to

enhance my transmission into the tissue, I have picked up signals on each scan line to bring back

to the transducer to be converted and processed for display on the monitor. Marlin and Nemo

have found each other again and they come back home with Dory’s help. Although my life in a

transducer is very structured, I have learned to love it.