- 023-8218-2416
- info@physio-soton.co.uk
- 297 High Street, Eastleigh, SO50 5NB
- Opening hours: Mon - Fri 10:00 - 20:00, Sat 10:00-15:00
We have installed a new Samsung HS60 MSK ultrasound scanner at our Eastleigh clinic. It is now in daily use for diagnostic musculoskeletal scans and for guiding injections, and it sits alongside our existing machine in the same treatment room.
Most patients never think about the equipment behind their scan. That is fair enough. What matters to you is whether someone can tell you what is wrong with your shoulder or your knee, and what to do about it. But the machine does influence that answer, and it is worth explaining how.
Musculoskeletal ultrasound asks more of a machine than most people realise. The structures we look at are small. A rotator cuff tendon is a few millimetres thick. A nerve running through the carpal tunnel is smaller still. The difference between a tendon that is thickened and inflamed and one that is partially torn can come down to a fine dark line on the screen.
Higher resolution makes those distinctions clearer. It also helps with the things that are easy to miss, such as a small amount of fluid in a bursa, early calcium forming inside a tendon, or new blood vessels growing into a painful Achilles.
Ultrasound is also the only common form of imaging that works while you move. We can scan your shoulder as you lift your arm and watch the tendon glide under the bone. MRI cannot do that. Clearer live images make that kind of dynamic assessment more reliable.
Here is the part that clinics rarely mention. Ultrasound is the most operator dependent imaging there is. A better machine does not make a better scan on its own.
Several normal structures can look like damage to someone who has not been trained to recognise them. The feathery pattern of the subscapularis tendon, the natural gap called the rotator interval, and an artefact called anisotropy that makes a healthy tendon appear dark can all be mistaken for a tear.
So the machine raises the ceiling. Training decides whether you reach it. That is why scans here are carried out by a clinician with a Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Ultrasound who trained under Professor Saulius Rutkauskas of the European Society of Musculoskeletal Radiology, rather than by whoever happens to be free.
Most people assume the scanner does the work. In practice, the probe you put on the skin decides what you can see. Different joints need different probes, and this is where the new setup makes a genuine difference.
The hockey stick probe: This is a high-frequency probe with a very small footprint, named for its shape. The small head lets it sit properly on awkward, bony areas where a standard probe simply cannot make good contact. That matters for the hand, wrist, foot and ankle, where the structures are small and close to the surface.
It improves two things at once. The image quality of those small joints is better, and guiding a needle into them becomes more precise. Injecting a small joint in the hand or foot is far harder than injecting a knee, and the margin for error is smaller.
The high-frequency linear probe: Used for most general musculoskeletal work, including the shoulder, elbow and Achilles tendon, where structures sit close to the surface.
The low-frequency probe: Used for deeper joints such as the hip. Lower frequency sound waves travel further into the body, at the cost of some fine detail, which is the trade-off you accept when the target is deep.
Matching the right probe to the right joint is a large part of getting a clear answer, and it is one reason an MSK ultrasound scanner set up for musculoskeletal work outperforms a general purpose machine.
The scanner is used across the full range of musculoskeletal work at the clinic:
Having two machines is not simply about having a spare. It means a diagnostic scan and a guided procedure can run without wheeling equipment between rooms, which keeps appointments shorter.
It also supports our teaching clinics. A student can scan on one machine while being supervised on the other, which is difficult to do with a single unit. You can read about our MSK ultrasound teaching clinic, where physiotherapists train with us while studying at Brunel University London.
Practically, very little about your appointment feels different. You still get an assessment, a scan, and an explanation of what the images show, all in the same visit. You still watch the screen while it happens.
What better equipment supports is confidence in the answer. Clearer images mean fewer uncertain findings, fewer scans that end with “we cannot be sure”, and fewer patients sent elsewhere for a second opinion weeks later.
For a stubborn shoulder or an Achilles that has not settled after months of exercises, that certainty is usually what people came for in the first place.
If you want to know more about the process itself, see our diagnostic ultrasound scan page, or read about ultrasound guided injections.
Scans are carried out by Marek Czeladzki, Chartered Physiotherapist, musculoskeletal sonographer and Independent Prescriber, at 297 High Street, Eastleigh, SO50 5NB.