Many people who hear the term "ultrasound" may also likely picture a pregnant woman in the doctor's office basically getting a sneak peek of the baby growing inside her womb.Perhaps even finding out whether she should paint the nursery pink or blue. But while the fetal imaging is one of the most common uses of ultrasounds, this diagnostic tool actually has many applications.
Ultrasound, also known as sonography, it basically uses sound waves to develop the ultrasound images of what's going on actually inside the body. An instrument called a transducer emits a high-frequency sound, inaudible to human ears, and then finally records the echoes as the sound waves bounce back to determine the size, the shape, and the consistency of soft tissues and organs.
This information is relayed in no time to actually produce images on a computer screen. Ultrasound technicians, or sonographers, undergo a special training so as to how to perform the test. Then a radiologist or your doctor will finally interpret the ultrasound images. This technology does finally help and diagnose and treat certain conditions.
Uses of Ultrasound Tests
Ultrasound imaging has a lot of uses in medicine, from confirming to dating a pregnancy and then finally diagnosing certain conditions and guiding the doctors through precise medical procedures. Buying ultrasound machines are not such a hard task. You can even buy used ultrasound machine online.
Pregnancy
Ultrasound images have a lot of uses during pregnancy. Early on, they can be used to determine the due dates, reveal the presence of the twins and other multiples, and rule out the ectopic pregnancies. They also are the valuable screening tools in helping to detect the potential problems, including some birth defects, placental issues, breech positioning, and others. Many expecting parents look forward to determining the sex of their child via ultrasound midway through a pregnancy. And later in the pregnancy, doctors can also use ultrasounds to estimate the size of the baby just before delivery.
Diagnostics
Doctors employ the ultrasound imaging in diagnosing a very wide variety of conditions affecting the organs and the soft tissues of the body, including the heart and blood vessels, the liver, the gallbladder, the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys, the bladder, the uterus, the ovaries, the eyes, the thyroid, and testicles. Ultrasounds may have some diagnostic limitations, however the sound waves do not transmit well through dense bone or the other parts of the body that may hold the air or gas, such as the bowel.
Use during medical procedures
Ultrasound imaging can help the doctors during procedures such as the needle biopsies, which require the doctors to remove tissues from a very precise area inside the body for testing in a lab.
Therapeutic applications.
Used ultrasound machines online sometimes are used to detect and treat soft-tissue injuries also.