ULTRASOUND    1700w

Ultrasound is a diagnostic technique commonly used in veterinary practices to support radiography in small animals. Ultrasound is a non-invasive technique in which ultrasonic waves are directed into the tissue and the reflections they create of the deep structures of are represented as a visual image. Ultrasound is used to evaluate most soft tissues, the heart and the abdominal system in small animals. However, it can also be used in equine to show tears in tendons and ligaments. Ultrasound is usually performed on a conscious patient which is being manually restrained. However sometimes sedation is needed for a nervous patient to help them to relax, especially for an abdominal scan (Cooper, Mullineaux and Turner, 2011).

Technical Detail

Before the ultrasound is carried out the patient must be clipped in order to allow contact between the probe and the skin. An ultrasound gel is also applied to the skin and probe to allow better contact (Lattimer, 2018). The patient is normally restrained in dorsal or lateral recumbency except when the heart is being scanned: in this case a special table is used with a hole in it which allows the patient to be scanned from beneath (Cooper, Mullineaux and Turner, 2011). The ultrasound machine consists of two main parts: the probe and processor.  The probe generates sound waves and receives reflected sound waves. The processor takes the sound waves and turns them into an image (Lattimer, 2018). Ultrasonic waves are produced by electrically stimulating a piezoelectric crystal (transducer). When the beam hits a boundary between tissues of varying acoustic impedance some of the sound waves are reflected back to the transducer as echoes (Lattimer, 2018). The echoes are converted into electrical impulses that are displayed on a machine to produce the picture of the tissues under examination (Lattimer, 2018).

Special Equipment