Ultrasound Scan
Ultrasound scan is a medical technique for creating images of different things within the body. It is commonly used on pregnant women to display what the baby in their abdomen looks like as well as their gender. Apart from that it is also used to study a person's abdominal and pelvis organs, heart and muscles. Ultrasound scan follows a external procedure meaning that the whole process is done from the outside but on some rare occasions there may be other things done from the inside. Apart from Ultrasound scan it is also known as sonogram or echocardiogram in different cases.
How does it work?
Similar to SoNAR it sends out extremely condensed and high-frequency sound waves (ranging from 1-5 megahertz) and waits for the signal to bounce back from between the body tissues. This is possible through a device known as the probe. It sends out condensed sound waves and the ones that have bounced back are picked up by this probe. Some of the waves bounce back at this point whilst the others continue travelling until they hit another body tissue boundary, using this information a picture is able to be formed and mapped out. As the waves are of such high frequency, the bare human ear is unable to hear anything this is where the name ultrasound comes in.
The Ultrasound Machine
The whole Ultrasound scan process is only possible with the help of the Ultrasound Machine that was invented by Ian Donald in 1956. This machine is made of 7 basic parts that make this process possible:
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- The screen is then able to produce the desired image from the information from the CPU.
- All this information is then saved onto a storage device as back up in case something happens to the original information.
- The last part of this process is the printer which just prints out the information previously displayed on the screen for other uses.
Ultrasound Procedure
For most Ultrasound scans the process is that the place where it is getting examined goes bare; for example a pregnant woman is going for an examination, she needs to lift her shirt so that her belly is not covered by anything. The sonographer (specialist in Ultrasound scans) then applies a water-based gel to the area getting examined. This helps provide a better surface for the transducer probe to move across. The probe is then placed on the surface of the examined area, during this process the sonographer may take notes of measurements. This whole process takes from 40 minutes to an hour.
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