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Medical Ultrasonography
Whitney Jacobson
Salt Lake Community College
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I am going to do my topical term paper on medical ultrasonography. I chose
this topic because I am going to school right now to get my degree in this career, so
what better topic to write about than this one.
Medical ultrasonography is using ultrasound to image the human body.
There is also medical ultrasonography for viewing animals’ bodies, but that is a
different topic that I won’t discuss in this term paper. I am going to be aiming on
human medical ultrasonography. Another word in the medical field for “medical
ultrasonography” is Diagnostic Sonography. Diagnostic Sonography is the
visualization of structures of the body by recording the reflections of pulses of highfrequency sound (ultrasound) waves directed into the tissue. An individual who
specializes in this field is known as a “Diagnostic Medical Sonographer.” In the past,
they were known as ultrasound technologists. Sonographers use equipment to
transmit sound waves at high frequencies into the patient’s body, resulting in an
image viewed on a computer screen. The use of ultrasound is important in prenatal
care and for cardiology.
When going into this career you usually start as a Radiologic
Technologist, which is the core of radiology with the other imaging areas of devices
termed as specialties. Radiology is a multi faceted field that has numerous
opportunities for career advancement. A radiologic technologist uses x-rays to
create images of the body. They produce images on computer screens. This career
choice and all the advanced programs and careers use an imaging technique to view
some part of the body, which is what diagnostic ultrasonography is.
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The areas that you can specialize can include Computerized Tomography
(CT), which is a process of creating a cross-sectional plane of any body part. The
patient is scanned by an x-ray tube rotating around the body part that is being
examined. A detector measures the radiation exiting the patient and it feeds the
information back into a computer. Then the computer compiles and calculates the
data and displays the image on a computer screen.
Another field of study that is advanced Radiography is Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI), which uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves along with a
computer to generate sectional images of patient anatomy. An MRI scanner is a
device where the patient lies within a large, powerful magnet where the magnetic
field is used to align the magnetization of some atomic nuclei in the body, and radio
frequency fields to systematically alter the alignment of this magnetization. This
device causes the nuclei to produce a rotating magnetic field detectable by the
scanner and this information is recorded to construct an image of the scanned area
of the body.
One other field that is advanced is Radiation Therapy (also known as
oncology). A radiation therapy technician or radiation therapist is an individual who
administers radiation treatments to cancer patients. They are instructed and guided
by a physician known as a radiation oncologist. Radiation oncology involved the use
of high-energy ionizing radiation to treat primarily malignant tumors. Therapists
administer the radiation treatments using highly technical equipment, provide
specialized patient care and observe the clinical progress of their patients.
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The last advanced choice I will talk about it Nuclear Medicine Technology. It
is the branch of medical imaging that involves procedures that require the use of
radioactive materials for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. Nuclear medicine
procedures usually require the injection of radioactive substances and the
subsequent imaging of patient’s organs. Procedures can also be performed on
specimens such as blood or urine.
Now I am going to show how Ultrasonography is related to physics. As I’ve
mentioned previously, ultrasound imaging is measuring the reflectivity of tissue to
sound waves. It relies on high frequency sounds to image the body and diagnose
patients. But I did not mention that it could also measure the velocity of moving
objects such as blood flow, which is known as “Doppler Imaging”. The Doppler
Imaging uses the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency of sound due to
the relative motion of source and receiver. So, therefore ultrasonography is using
longitudinal waves, which cause particles to oscillate back and forth and produce a
series of compressions and rarefactions. Another thing about ultrasonography that
relates to physics is that it uses high frequency sounds that are higher than the
human ear can hear (20,000 Hz.). Ultrasounds cannot detect objects that are smaller
than its wavelength, which is why higher frequencies of ultrasounds produce better
resolutions. The physics and the technology involved in ultrasonography have a
broad effect on how the structures appear and without the anatomy, physiology, and
physics there would not be such a thing as Ultrasonography presented today.
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REFERENCES
1)(WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION, 2013)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ultrasonography
2) (UNKOWN, 2011) http://www.radiologytechnicianreviews.org/career-forradiology-technologist.htm
3) (BOUTELLE, 2013) http://www.slideshare.net/u.surgery/physics-of-ultrasoundimaging
4)(SIMMONS, 2013)
http://www.genesis.net.au/~ajs/projects/medical_physics/ultrasound/
5) (LEDDY, 2013) http://www.dynamicultrasound.org/dugphysics.html