Introduction

There are many situations in which ultrasound is performed. Perhaps you are pregnant, and your obstetrician wants you to have an ultrasound to check on the developing baby or determine the due date. Maybe you are having problems with blood circulation in a limb or your heart, and your doctor has requested a Doppler ultrasound to look at the blood flow. Ultrasound has been a popular medical imaging technique for many years.

Ultrasound or ultrasonography is a medical imaging technique that uses high frequency sound waves and their echoes. The technique is similar to the echolocation used by bats, whales and dolphins, as well as SONAR used by submarines. In ultrasound, the following events happen:

• The ultrasound machine transmits high-frequency (1 to 5 megahertz) sound pulses into your body using a probe;
• The sound waves travel into your body and hit a boundary between tissues (e.g. between fluid and soft tissue, soft tissue and bone);
• Some of the sound waves get reflected back to the probe, while some travel on further until they reach another boundary and get reflected;
• The reflected waves are picked up by the probe and relayed to the machine;
• The machine calculates the distance from the probe to the tissue or organ (boundaries) using the speed of sound in tissue (5,005 ft/s or1,540 m/s) and the time of the each echo's return (usually on the order of millionths of a second); and
• The machine displays the distances and intensities of the echoes on the screen, forming a two dimensional image like the one shown below.

In a typical ultrasound, millions of pulses and echoes are sent and received each second. The probe can be moved along the surface of the body and angled to obtain various views.

Ultrasound Machine

A basic ultrasound machine has the following parts:

• transducer probe - probe that sends and receives the sound waves ;
• central processing unit (CPU) - computer that does all of the calculations and contains the electrical power supplies for itself and the transducer probe;
• transducer pulse controls - changes the amplitude, frequency and duration of the pulses emitted from the transducer probe ;
• display - displays the image from the ultrasound data processed by the CPU ;
• keyboard/cursor - inputs data and takes measurements from the display;
• disk storage device (hard, floppy, CD) - stores the acquired images ; and
• printer - prints the image from the displayed data.

Different Types of Ultrasound

Most ultrasound machines presents a two dimensional image, or "slice," of a three dimensional object (fetus, organ). Two other types of ultrasound are currently in use, 3D ultrasound imaging and Doppler ultrasound.

3D Ultrasound Imaging
In the last several years, ultrasound machines capable of three-dimensional imaging have been developed. In these machines, several two-dimensional images are acquired by moving the probes across the body surface or rotating inserted probes. The two-dimensional scans are then combined by specialized computer software to form 3D images.

Doppler Ultrasound
Doppler ultrasound is based upon the Doppler Effect. When the object reflecting the ultrasound waves is moving, it changes the frequency of the echoes, creating a higher frequency if it is moving toward the probe and a lower frequency if it is moving away from the probe. How much the frequency is changed depends upon how fast the object is moving. Doppler ultrasound measures the change in frequency of the echoes to calculate how fast an object is moving. Doppler ultrasound has been used mostly to measure the rate of blood flow through the heart and major arteries.

Major Uses of Ultrasound

Ultrasound has been used in a variety of clinical settings, including obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology and cancer detection. The main advantage of ultrasound is that certain structures can be observed without using radiation. Ultrasound can also be done much faster than x-rays or other radiographic techniques. Here is a short list of some uses for ultrasound:

Obstetrics and Gynecology

• measuring the size of the fetus to determine the due date;
• determining the position of the fetus to see if it is in the normal head down position or breech;
• checking the position of the placenta to see if it is improperly developing over the opening to the uterus (cervix) ;
• seeing the number of fetuses in the uterus;
• checking the sex of the baby (if the genital area can be clearly seen);
• checking the fetus's growth rate by making many measurements over time;
• detecting ectopic pregnancy, the life-threatening situation in which the baby is implanted in the mother's Fallopian tubes instead of in the uterus ;
• determining whether there is an appropriate amount of amniotic fluid cushioning the baby ;
• monitoring the baby during specialized procedures - ultrasound has been helpful in seeing and avoiding the baby during amniocentesis (sampling of the amniotic fluid with a needle for genetic testing). Years ago, doctors use to perform this procedure blindly; however, with accompanying use of ultrasound, the risks of this procedure have dropped dramatically; and
• seeing tumors of the ovary and breast.

Cardiology

• seeing the inside of the heart to identify abnormal structures or functions; and
• measuring blood flow through the heart and major blood vessels.

Urology

• measuring blood flow through the kidney ;
• seeing kidney stones ;
• detecting prostate cancer early; and
• a growing use for ultrasound as a rapid imaging tool for diagnosis in emergency rooms.

Safety

There have been many concerns about the safety of ultrasound. Because ultrasound is energy, the question becomes "What is this energy doing to my tissues or my baby?" There have been some reports of low birthweight babies being born to mothers who had frequent ultrasound examinations during pregnancy. The two major possibilities with ultrasound are as follows:

• development of heat - tissues or water absorb the ultrasound energy which increases their temperature locally; and
• formation of bubbles (cavitation) - when dissolved gases come out of solution due to local heat caused by ultrasound.

However, there have been no substantiated ill-effects of ultrasound documented in studies in either humans or animals. This being said, ultrasound should still be used only when necessary.

About the Examination

For an ultrasound exam, you go into a room with a technician and the ultrasound machine.

You remove your clothes (all of your clothes or only those over the area of interest).
The ultrasonographer drapes a cloth over any exposed areas that are not needed for the exam. The ultrasonographer applies a mineral oil-based jelly to your skin -- this jelly eliminates air between the probe and your skin to help pass the sound waves into your body. The ultrasonographer covers the probe with a plastic cover. He/she passes the probe over your skin to obtain the required images. Depending upon the type of exam, the probe may be inserted into you. You may be asked to change positions to get better looks at the area of interest. After the images have been acquired and measurements taken, the data is stored on disk. You may get a hard copy of the images. You are given a towelette to clean up.