EEVblog #1315 - Ultrasound Probe Extreme Teardown!

What's inside a Philips curved array ultrasound probe?

#Medical #Ultrasound #Teardown

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[EEVblog]

That time when you destructively tear down something old and then find out they sell for up to $500 on ebay...

[mrobinson]

Ultrasound professional here. The C5-2 used on the ATL/Philips HDI-5000 was carried over to the iU-22 by Phillips that was EOL'd in 2017 and many are still in use today. The C5-2 was superseded by the newer C5-1, a much better probe, but many of these are still in use regardless. The physical technology has changed some since then (crystals are now grown in one single piece rather than cut to size), but the major changes have been made in machine size/power and software.

[llxibo]

All these wires must be co-ax, to minimize crosstalk. 15:51 Outer braids and inner conductors are welded separately. So they used good-old hypertronics connector with 256+ pin for 128 elements. Extra pins are also used for identification EEPROM (3:59, top right corner in PCB).
These wires also have some extra loops in the connector cage to ensure all co-ax wires approximately same length. With my experience on industrial ultrasonic testing, ~1ns phase alignment should be enough for <10MHz applications, but trimming and looping those wires cost nothing anyway.

[gadgestlab]

I work as a field service engineer for a large medical device manufacturing company. I can really appreciate the quality and engineering that goes into hospital and laboratory instruments. In could watch these type of videos all day long. Would love to send you some failed or broken boards and power supplies for you tare-down and commentary.

[michaelathens]

The amount of engineering that goes into medical devices never fails to blow my mind. Very cool!

[ats]

Those inductors are not for EMC. They are tuning inductors, one for each transducer element. The PZT transducer elements are basically Type II Ceramic capacitors.

[davidroberts]

I worked for Atl in the late nineties as a field service engineer, great to see inside of the scan heads as we just swapped them over when they went faulty and always wondered what was inside of them. As we use to send the faulty ones back to the USA for repair. There was lots of shielding to stop interference on the signal going back to the ultrasound, hospitals were a very electrically noisy environment. great memories to see the HDi 3000 again. Thanks for the teardown Dave

[MrEinstain]

8:47 you could say there are now two thermosingles lmao

[StreuB]

48k views on the original video is just 48 hours. I'm not surprised, these were badass videos!! Thanks Dave!!!! AMAZING the level of engineering in these things.

[justin.campbell]

Thats not a connector, THIS is a connector!

[ewoutbuhler]

Hey Dave, I'm from Philips Healthcare and thanks for dropping all our IP on the internet :) No really, what a marvel in engineering, wouldn't you agree?
So that unit on the screenshot you showed in 1:23 is our Lumify POCUS.
POCUS is Point Of Care UltraSound and is a complete US system in a transducer. It's connected to and fed by a normal Android tablet using just one USB connector. Indeed a huge step from the Philips/ATL cart you showed. Mind you, this is an extremely powerful and versatile tool in the field, but does not hold a candle to what is possible nowadays with a more potent sized US unit. For the Hospital we still have those "Wall-E" like unit allbeit way lighter and extremely ergonomic with flat/touch screens and the works. Brilliant 3D processing, it's incredible, really. Thanks for sharing and showing the engineering that goes into devices like this. Learned something myself, because I'm more into the MRi and CT corner of our company. Do you want me to deliver a 6300 kg magnet for teardown? You will need some heavier tools for that...

[envisionelectronics]

This is one of the most impressive teardowns in recent memory if only because I had no idea how these worked!

[Raveena]

Thank You. Opening the transducer actually helps me to visualize the physics component for my ultrasound program.

[Jtretta]

I think the transducer array very pretty. Something about super precise, repeating complex objects is just satisfying.

[TomStorey]

To think, that entire massive machine has basically been reduced to "there's an app for that".

[Mojoissimo]

Thanks so much for this. Presently studying for ultrasonography exams (I'm an anaesthetist) - so much better to simply see the inside of a probe, rather than reading numerous slightly confused (and occasionally incorrect) textbook descriptions of it!

[sidewinder]

Wow. Complex piece of kit! Thanks for opening it up.

[matejcelik]

10:42 it's 266 stripes /133 elements

[shyleshsrinivasan]

I'm a big connector fanboy and I had a good time !
Always wanted to teardown one of these myself ! Really glad !

[TanjoGalbi]

@1:36 That tablet in the photo you showed looked exactly like my Nvidia Shield Tablet. They had it up-side-down in the photo with it sitting on the buttons! lol
It's not a custom tablet or new, it's one of the first gamer tablets featuring an Nvidia GPU. So it looks like the ultrasound probe is now made to work with a custom app in any Android tablet with a micro USB port. Maybe they have one with the more USB-C too.

*NOTE* I just read up on the probe and it says "compatible with select Android devices". Maybe the Nvidia Shield Tablet is compatible because of the GPU making it capable of showing a realtime display that would be needed.