Ultrasound scanner—Teaching tool

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging, one of the most widely used diagnostic modalities, anchors the fields of medicine, physics, and engineering. In university classrooms, however, ultrasound imaging is often taught passively with a lack of practical element as the clinical machines are not easily available and there are very few alternative teaching tools available on the market. As part of an undergraduate student project, we have developed a teaching toolkit featuring an inexpensive ultrasonic range finder to demonstrate the pulse-echo imaging process. The primary focus is the construction of equipment to enable known pedagogic principles (relating to active learning) to be applied to the subject area of ultrasound. Although operating at an acoustic frequency considerably lower than that employed clinically (and therefore achieving a much lower spatial resolution), the toolkit provides students with large observable effects while keeping cost to the minimum. Completed with an easyto-use user interface and a set of carefully designed supplementary material (https://stacks.iop.org/EJP/42/055703/mmedia) including worksheets and lab technician guide, this toolkit aims to teach students the fundamental principles of ultrasound imaging via hands-on practice. We have designed it to be cheap, easy to set up, and portable. The effectiveness and impact of the toolkit were evaluated by ten undergraduate students who responded in the form of satisfaction questionnaires. To minimise the selection bias, we chose five students who had received no prior university-based instruction on ultrasound and five third-year biomedical engineering students who had learned about the topic previously. They demonstrated a strong interest in using the toolkit for a lab session and described it as user-friendly and highly engaging.

A simple classroom exercise for teaching principles of ultrasound diagnostic using two springs

“…For this reason, it is widely accessible and suitable for gifted pupils in elementary school, for students in medical vocational schools and academic high schools, up to schools of veterinary and human medicine at the university level, even in institutions that lack the resources for expensive electronics. Using an ultrasound device for demonstration purposes [14], which is standardly used for tissue imaging, does not make visible the physical principles behind ultrasound imaging, therefore, it has very little pedagogical value, functioning as a black box to students. For example, even the relatively simple and cheap setup outlined in article [14] cannot make the ultrasound waves and their behaviour visible to students.…”

“…Using an ultrasound device for demonstration purposes [14], which is standardly used for tissue imaging, does not make visible the physical principles behind ultrasound imaging, therefore, it has very little pedagogical value, functioning as a black box to students. For example, even the relatively simple and cheap setup outlined in article [14] cannot make the ultrasound waves and their behaviour visible to students. Similar considerations apply to demonstrations of other aspects of ultrasound, such as its thermal effects on tissue [15].…”

Work in progress: cost-effective table-top ultrasound systems as platform for biomedical engineering education

“…Ultrasound is a relatively low-cost imaging modality that is used widely for various applications in healthcare, and has the potential to bridge the disconnect between theory and application in the engineering education curriculum (Zhao et al 2021). In various levels of graduate and undergraduate curricula, ultrasound has been used as a tool in biomedical engineering education since it provides a concrete example of how engineering and physical principles are applied in a real-world clinical device.…”