What Is Ultrasound Imaging?

The background of ultrasound imaging has led to improvements and made this imaging process more popular in the medical field. Ultrasounds started in the 1940s the idea was borrowed, “From sonar technology in World War II” (Allen 43). Ultrasound imaging has been around for over fifty years, and there are still new things to learn about the process of imaging. New discoveries are made frequently in the medical field, for example ultrasound used to only be two dimensional imaging, but now four dimensional imaging is possible. Ultrasound imaging has not always been a popular form of imaging, “until the early 1970s” (Allen 46). Sonography was not a well known form of imaging until the late 1900s because no one knew much about it until they started to make new discoveries about imaging. Today ultrasound imaging is “the dominant tool for echocardiography, obstetrics, and …show more content…
Sonography is a safe and effective imaging tool, but the machines, “do not present this information in a manner that is easily accessed or understood by the operator” (Alexander 19). Ultrasound imaging can be difficult to understand because the procedure uses little to no radiation, for penetrating thick layers of human tissue can be difficult. Shallow penetration of human tissue leads to a poor quality images; making images hard to characterize or diagnose. A Major difficulty in ultrasound is most of the, “information on biological effects of ultrasound on humans is undiscovered” (Alexander 20). The undiscovered effects of ultrasound it makes some information hard for the operator to understand. One thing that makes ultrasounds hard to read and understand is that, “ultrasound signals will appear as gray-scale images” (Allen 43). Gray scale images are a ultrasound in different shades of gray, which makes characterizing the image