Smartphone Ultrasound
Smartphone ultrasound is a fairly new technology where you can use a wired or wireless ultrasound probe to turn your mobile phone or tablet into a fully-featured ultrasound scanner.
There is a large number of smartphone scanners to choose and can be daunting.
At JnJ Ltd we always offer smartphone ultrasound machines that not only suit our client's needs but have been evaluated by our in house sonographers and proved to be of exceptional quality.
You can, therefore, rest assured that if you are in the market for a smartphone ultrasound machine, JnJ Ltd has done the leg work for you, and you are getting the best ultrasound equipment to address your requirements.
We have therefore looked into smartphone ultrasound probes, and we have evaluated at least 20 probes so far. Below, you can read our evaluation of the C3 wireless probe.
Review of C3 Smartphone Ultrasound probe.
This probe is a curvilinear probe and therefore suitable for general ultrasound imaging such as abdominal, renal, obstetrics, gynae, aortic and lung ultrasound scans.
The smartphone ultrasound probes are available with a range of elements, usually 80, 128 and 192. The number of elements is a fundamental indication of the image quality and pixel size, so the more elements, the better the image quality is expected to be.
The C3 smartphone probe is a miniature ultrasound machine that has 192 elements and offers colour Doppler capabilities and variable frequencies between 3.5MHz and 5MHz.
Transportation
The probe is packaged in a secure case and delivered with a charging cable and quick set-up instructions. You will need a mobile phone, either an Android or Apple phone or a tablet to complete the setup.
Set Up
The probe can be used with a mobile phone or a tablet. We evaluated the image quality using an android tablet.
Preparing the probe for scanning is straightforward and requires downloading the software available for either android or iOS to the smart display and connecting the ultrasound probe to the tablet via Wi-Fi.
Scanning
The software scanning interface offers a range of parameters that can be adjusted during scanning such as gain, depth focus dynamic range and harmonics.
Blood flow can be evaluated with either colour Doppler, power Doppler or PW mode.
The probe has buttons on one side, so you can perform various functions through the probe without the need of taping on the screen.
Image Quality
Image quality will positively or negatively affect the diagnostic confidence and accuracy, and therefore is the most important factor in our tests other than the price.
We evaluated the image quality for:
- Abdominal ultrasound
- Gynaecology
- Lungs
We were pleasantly surprised by the image quality of this wireless smartphone probe. The images were clear and diagnostic.
Although there was some bleeding, Colour Doppler and power Doppler were able to demonstrate portal flow, and we found them acceptable.
Below are the ultrasound images we obtained:
Abdominal Ultrasound Images
Gynaecology Images
Lung Images
Colour Doppler Images
What is the Cost of the Smartphone Ultrasound?
There are various smartphone ultrasound probes online that look the same but have different prices attached to them. The difference in prices depends on the capabilities of the probe. For example, an 80 element probe will be significantly cheaper. Also, a black and white smartphone probe will be cheaper than a colour Doppler one..
The price of this probe starts from £2000 +vat at the time of testing.
Conclusion:
We have tried various smartphone ultrasound probes, and we can confidently say that this is one of the few ultrasound probes which offers exceptional, diagnostic imaging quality as well as colour Doppler capabilities.
Although various settings can be manipulated by the buttons available on the body of the probe we found sometimes wishing for a 3rd hand to be able to manipulate the onscreen settings, but this is a trade-off of the flexibility and portability smartphone ultrasound offers, and it is associated with all the smartphone ultrasound equipment.
Following the evaluation, we are confident to offer this probe to any clients looking for an affordable ultrasound imaging solution with no compromise to the image quality and capabilities.