Ultrasounds 101: What Every Patient Needs To Know

When most individuals think of ultrasounds, they remember it is a method for determining a baby's gender before it is born and they forget ultrasounds actually have many other applications in the medical field. These convenient machines are one of the simplest ways of viewing anything inside a patient's body, and as such, they are used for a wide range of diagnostic techniques. Here are a few things every patient needs to learn before they take an ultrasound.

What Is General Ultrasound Imaging?

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At the most basic level, ultrasounds are an imaging tool. The answer to "what is general ultrasound imaging?" is essentially that an ultrasound is a type of scan that creates a picture of the body's interior. When we start looking at ultrasounds more closely, we see an ultrasound is somewhat unique among imaging tools. Instead of using potentially dangerous radiation, it uses basic sound waves. A sonographer operates an ultrasound imaging machine. Once the sonographer uses the ultrasound to create an image of the patient, a specialist may be needed to interpret the images, which tend to look like like a black and white picture with very fuzzy boundaries. In some cases, a doctor may inject a contrast dye to make the image clearer. However, the average ultrasound picture is just a rough outline of all the organs in the body.

Continue to learn more about precisely how ultrasounds work.

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