2 DECADES OF TRANSESOPHAGEAL PHASED-ARRAY PROBES

After its introduction about two decades ago, transesophageal echocard iography (TEE) has rapidly evolved into an important diagnostic featur e for the cardiologist, since it offers anatomic and hemodynamic infor mation which cannot be obtained precordially, Part of this success was due to the developments in transducer technology which resulted in sm aller probes with progressively better imaging qualities, A short revi ew of past, recent and future developments of TEE phased array probes, in particular those at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, will be g iven, Furthermore, this article discusses basic parameters of the tran sducer dictating image quality such as centre frequency, array apertur e and focusing illustrated with several simulations, The simulations s how that a poor design of the transducer will limit the resolution and will give artefacts in the two-dimensional image.