No, this isn’t something only pregnant women and bats should know about. It’s a very interesting scientific feat where high frequency sound waves are used to form images. Doctors use a hand-held transducer to emit the sound waves. The returning wave which is reflected from the interfaces between different tissues in the body is detected and used to form an image.

ultrasound


It started in the 1950s in Glasgow when Ian Macdonald, an obstetrician, began to experiment with the use of adapted industrial sonar equipment to examine a pregnant uterus. The initial scanners were big clumsy devices producing low resolution black and white images but these were soon replaced with the more advanced hand-held equipment.

The development of grey scale imaging in the 1970s and 80s allowed the differentiation of different tissue and with the arrival of real-time imaging the operator could watch moving structures within the body. Eek! Imagine seeing your organs for the first time!

Today the technique is used to examine just about every organ in the body.

Source: The Naked Scientist