TECHNICIAN RESPONSIBILITIES
Qualifications

• Technician must be a certified UGC field technician that is certified to collect Ribeye Area, Fat Thickness, Percent Intramuscular Fat and Rump Fat images at the time images are collected.
  
• Technicians must use approved Aloka 500 with a 17cm linear array 3.5 MHz transducer, desktop computer system with UGC Certified Field Software and ILIA approved Contoured Guide.
  
• Information that should be recorded on the Aloka Screen if not using BIA Software
• Technician Name
• Company Name
• Ranch Name
• Aloka Serial Number & Probe Serial
  
• Equipment Settings - Aloka 500 Settings
• Focal Point Settings – F1 & F2
• Near Gain Settings – 2.1
• Far Gain Settings – 25
• Overall Gain Settings – 90
  
• Internal settings for the Aloka
• Frame Correlation – Auto
• Contrast – 4
• AGC – 1
• On New Aloka’s all images should be collected at the 1.5X magnification
  
• Technician will collect the following images.
  1 - Image for rump fat thickness
  1 - Image for 12-13 th rib fat thickness and Ribeye area
  4 - Images for percent intramuscular fat

• Each longitudinal image for percent intramuscular fat is to be considered an individual image, and re-oiling after each image is collected will apply to all %IMF images.
  
• Technician should apply supplemental heat for the oil or couplant in environments where the ambient temperature is less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Ultrasound equipment and computer equipment should also be shielded from extreme temperatures.
  
• All cattle are to be clipped unless the hair is ½ inch or less in length at the scanning location. It is recommended that the technician use a pressurized blower to clean foreign material and moisture from the scanning region or properly clean with curry comb, and use ample oil for necessary conduction for the collection of quality images. Ribeye images must be taken with ILIA approved Contoured Guide. Images will be stored on the hard drive of the computer then downloaded onto a CD or Zip Drive for submission to the ILIA Lab.
  
• Technicians will advise Producers to contact their perspective breed associations for applicable barn sheets.
  
• Technician will be responsible for the completion of all paperwork for the Scan Session which is required before processing will begin. Once barnsheets and chute side sheets have been submitted the images will be interpreted.
  
  Chute Side Sheet – This will be used by the technician to record the order in which the cattle are scanned. This will be provided by ILIA CUIP Lab in either electronic form or hard copy form.

Barn sheet – This will be provided to the Breeder from the perspective breed associations. Please double check animal identification numbers used with the numbers recognized by the breed association.

• Processing fees will be on a per head for any breed of cattle. Payment is to be made in full before images will be interpreted. Technicians must make this payment in the form of check, money order, cashiers check or credit card.
• The technician is responsible for sending in the images, data, and payment for the scan session to the ILIA CUIP Lab. The images can be on either a cd or Iomega pc zip disk. Hard original copies of the chute side sheets and barn sheets completed must accompany cd or zip disks.