Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Medical ultrasound includes diagnostic techniques (mainly imaging techniques) using ultrasound, as well as therapeutic applications of ultrasound. In diagnosis, it is used to create an image of internal body structures such as tendons, muscles, joints, blood vessels, and internal organs, to measure some characteristics (e.g., distances and velocities) or to generate an informative audible sound.
Ultrasound is defined by the American National Standards Institute as "sound at frequencies greater than 20 kHz". In air at atmospheric pressure, ultrasonic waves have wavelengths of 1.9 cm or less. Ultrasound can be generated at very high frequencies; ultrasound is used for sonochemistry at frequencies up to multiple hundreds of kilohertz.
Some resources indicate that there are clear reasons for this and that such scans are also clearly beneficial because ultrasound enables clear clinical advantages for assessing the developing fetus in terms of morphology, bone shape, skeletal features, fetal heart function, volume evaluation, fetal lung maturity, [21] and general fetus well being.
Ultrasound image showing the liver, gallbladder and common bile duct. Medical ultrasound uses high frequency broadband sound waves in the megahertz range that are reflected by tissue to varying degrees to produce (up to 3D) images. This is commonly associated with imaging the fetus in pregnant women. Uses of ultrasound are much broader, however.
Abdominal ultrasound can be used to diagnose abnormalities in various internal organs, such as the kidneys, [1] liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen and abdominal aorta.If Doppler ultrasonography is added, the blood flow inside blood vessels can be evaluated as well (for example, to look for renal artery stenosis).
Ultrasound can ablate tumors or other tissue non-invasively. [4] This is accomplished using a technique known as high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), also called focused ultrasound surgery. This procedure uses generally lower frequencies than medical diagnostic ultrasound (250–2000 kHz), but significantly higher time-averaged intensities.
Echocardiography, also known as cardiac ultrasound, is the use of ultrasound to examine the heart. It is a type of medical imaging , using standard ultrasound or Doppler ultrasound . [ 1 ] The visual image formed using this technique is called an echocardiogram , a cardiac echo , or simply an echo .
A portable ultrasound machine used in the prehospital setting. Emergency ultrasound is used to quickly diagnose a limited set of injuries or pathologic conditions, [4] specifically those where conventional diagnostic methods would either take too long or would introduce greater risk to a person (either by transporting the person away from the most closely monitored setting, or exposing them to ...