We often gets asked which is the best probe for a specific application or procedure.

First lets exclude all of the specialty probes from this discussion. Examples of the specialty probes include trans-vaginal, trans-rectal and ophthalmology. Prospects who are looking for these applications know what they are looking for and are quickly asking about the specific details of the frequencies, depths, frame rate, and image quality.

Now back to the purpose of this post –
Do you have a probe for pneumothorax?
Which probe is the best probe for vascular access?
Do you have a probe for musculoskeletal?
Which probe is best for…..
Do you have a probe for …..

There are 1000s of applications for ultrasound. No one person can know all of the applications. Searching the internet we can quickly find best practices and ultrasound images that show the anatomy and teach us how to diagnose using those ultrasound images. These web references will often refer to two major types of probes small parts and general purpose.

Therefore to determine which probe to use you will need to read through all of the web references and see which probe is recommended for your procedure??

Well the good news is we don’t need to do that. We simply need to know what we are trying to accomplish and then we can select the correct tool, ultrasound probe, for the job. For the specific ultrasound procedure we don’t even need to know the name. We simply need to know the depth the target anatomy. How far away from the surface of the body is the anatomy you are trying to view?

The reason that this is all we need to know is that a small parts probe is optimized for viewing anatomy from 0.5 cm to 5 cm from the surface of the body. And a general purpose probe is optimized for viewing from 4 cm to 20 cm from the surface of the body.

We also get questions like these:

Do Interson probes have Doppler technology / color flow? Not today. Interson provides 2D Black and white images.
Does Interson make a probe that is suitable for cardiac? Our probes provide 2D black and white images at about 12 frames per second. Cardiologists are typically looking for frame rates near and above 30 frames per second and with Doppler technology to measure flows and pressure between chambers. Our general purpose probe is used in a FAST Exam to check for pericardial effusion.

99-5929 is Interson’s general purpose / abdominal probe – optimal depth range 4 cm to 20 cm
99-5930 is Interson’s small parts / vascular access probe – optimal depth range 0.5 cm to 5 cm

99-5929 sells for $4,000 USD
99-5930 sells for $4,900 USD
These are our end-user quantity one prices.