Cardiac Echo Test

What do the following numbers represent during a Cardiac Echo:

COMP 50
GAIN  54

They were on the monitor, along with BPM etc...

Thank You!
Chuck

[ed34]

I believe these are levels which are controlled by the technician to obtain the best image. Gain is like the volume control on an amplifier, it intensifies the beams or reduces them. Gain effects the whole spectrum equally, but there are individual sliders to adjust the intensity of each part of the image if required. I believe comp is compression, correctly known as dynamic range compression. The monitor cannot display the 1000's of incoming signals, so the technician logarithmically alters the range of signals displayed with this setting, e.g. 0-30 decibels. The echo machine has lots of options such as reject and time gain compensation for enhancing/decreasing each individual beam from the transducer probe.

[ed34]

just to add out of interest, if you look at the probe, if will have a number, e.g. s3 or s12. This is the number of megahertz that the probe runs at. The higher the frequency, the sharper the image. However, higher frequencies will not penetrate thicker tissue as well as lower frequencies, so adults have a lower frequency than children for example.

[BosChuck]

Thanks! I was not sure exactly what those numbers meant, so I appreciate the response. I am still waiting to hear from my PCP on the results, but figure no news is good news.