Mechanical Transducers & Arrays - Video Lesson

Welcome back, everybody, to our series on ultrasound imaging physics and instrumentation. This lesson looks more in detail at the differences between mechanical and electronic array transducers and the advantages and disadvantages of them both. Understanding how these transducers differ and the relationships between their design and its effects on resolution and imaging is important to optimizing image quality. Let's get started with a definition of a mechanical transducer. Mechanical transducers are single element transducers. This means they have just one piezoelectric crystal that generates and receives sound waves. Here's a quick description of how the single crystal transducer works. The piezoelectric crystal compresses and decompresses in response to electricity to vibrate and generate sound waves. The crystal is housed in a motor that physically moves to sweep the beam across the area of interest like the hands of a clock. This creates a fan shaped sound beam.