What's a summary for ultrasound?

Question

How is it done? How it's formed? How the sound waves are made? Everything and anything about it!

Answer 1

Ultra = above, so ultrasound is sound above what you can hear.

An ultrasound machine is just a form of sonar. It works in a similar fashion, as does radar. Sound is sent out, some tissues can absorb it while other tissues can reflect it. The sound is picked up and with computer processing an image can be produced.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound
“Ultrasound is sound with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing, this limit being approximately 20 kilohertz (20,000 hertz).”

The human body is mostly water so the ultrasonic waves can pass through the body into an inside cavity, like the bladder, a kidney, or a woman’s womb. The strength can be adjusted to penetrate more tissue, but it only works well in a cavity. The ultrasound waves can pass through tissue like sonar passes through water.

In the case of a pregnant woman the womb is filled with a fluid, ambotic fluid, that is mostly water. The ultrasonic waves can easily penetrate this fluid, but they are reflected by the babies body inside. This creates an outline shape with some rough outlines of the face and the limb. Even enough definition to make out if a penis is present or not.

Ultrasound is considered safer than using x-rays or some other radioactive source (CT or nuclear medical scans for radioactive isotopes). However, it has been shown that the ultrasound waves can damage the brain of a rat fetus, so ultrasound should only be used on a fetus if there is a medical reason to do so. Just getting a picture of the fetus is unethetical.

In my case I have kidney stones and an ultrasound inspection was used to see how large they are and where they were located. The sound isn’t focused agaisnt my head so the procedure is very safe, and much cheaper than and MRI exam is. Also the technican can run a long scan searching for something which is more difficult to do with an MRI.

The Machine has a paddle with a vibrating membrane and a smaller sound absorbing membrane. The skin is prepared with a gell, to make better contact with the paddle. As the paddle is placed against the skin it vibrates the skin, and the body itself, then the vibrations are carried to the organ being inspected. The reflected vibrations are taken in by the paddle and transferred to the machine. As the technican moves the ultrasound paddle then they create a scan image, sort of like what a radar does. There are seveal sound receptors (the smaller vibrating membrance) inside the paddle so a single sweep can create a larger image. The patient doesn’t feel anything, there is no bone conduction to the ear or any other sensation. This is another reason why it is a very safe scanning method.

The returning signals are compiled by the ultrasound machine’s internal computer and displayed as a pie shapped image on the screen. It takes a trained technican to make sense of that image. I didn’t understand what was on the screen during my ultrasound. Since the paddle has audio receptors, it is easy to include one that can pick up a fetus’s heartbeat. Also part of the heart beat sound is in the ultrasonic frequency so the machine can pick it up.

“Medical sonography (ultrasonography) is a useful ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging technique used to visualize muscles, tendons, and many internal organs, their size, structure and any pathological lesions. They are also used to visualize a fetus during pregnancy. Ultrasound scans are performed by medical health care professionals called sonographers. Obstetric sonography is commonly used during pregnancy.

Ultrasound is generally regarded as a "safe test" because it does not use ionising radiation as in x-rays, nuclear medicine, or CT. But it is a form of energy, and scans should only be performed for a suitable medical indication by trained operators (sonographers). Scans performed for baby photos are considered by the profession to be unethical.

The biggest danger of ultrasound is often considered to be misdiagnosis by untrained operators.

A study on rodent fetus brains that are exposed to ultrasound showed signs of damage. Speculation on human fetuses can be in a range of no significant complications to variety of mental and brain disorder. The study shows that rodent brain cells failed to grow to their proper position and remained scattered in incorrect parts of the brain. The conditions of this experiment are different from typical fetal scanning because of the long dwell times. Care should be taken to use low power settings and avoid pulsed wave scanning of the fetal brain unless specifically indicated in high risk pregnancies. ”

Ultrasound can be used for other things. Pitched at a slightly different frequency it can be used to clean teeth by a dentist. The vibrations are pitched to not hurt the tooth, and to shake the plaque off. A very strong concentrated wave can be used to break up kidney stones. As long as the waves aren’t pointed at a bone the patient will suffer no damage. It can be focused to create heat in a specific region, at a specific depth so some metabolic disorders can be treated in this way. It can also be used to promote bone growth, probably by causing microscopic damage on the surface. It can be used to help penetrate the blood/brain barrier to make it easier to administer drugs. Ultrasound can also be used to image unhealthy tissue for specific organs/growths, like tumors. Ultrasound is also good to use for liposuction. It can easily image the area, and a focused beam can destroy fat cells making them eaier to vacumm out.

For more information see the Wikipeida article.

Answer 2

Not all faculties bring this measure. You can do it with an pals measure from a few faculties and techniques, a few universities will present a bachelors measure. The measure you're watching for is Diagnostic Medical Sonography - with emphasis on OB. I do not realise how you assert you do not desire to be a clinical diagnostic ultrasound technician for the reason that that's what an 'ultrasound tech' is - from belly, fetal, OB, cardiac - there are lots of locations of research. You must discover a application that has the subject you're in need of.

Answer 3

here's a link to howstuffworks.com.. it is a very informative, in-depth article.

i hope you will find it useful

http://health.howstuffworks.com/ultrasound.htm