Ultrasound technology applied in medicine

over 2 years ago (Edited)

First of all my respectful greetings to all the Hive.blog community, this time we continue to relate to the wonderful phenomenon of sound, and this time its relationship or technological application to essential areas of our development such as medicine.

Introduction

As a human being it will always be of vital importance to be able to have versatile technological tools for the development of any of our activities, and even more, if these tools can be used in the care of our body health, therefore, the sound through science-technology has been of great help to know and analyze our body through the area of medicine.

In previous articles we have already been learning about some applications of sound in its different ranges or frequencies such as audible sound for humans, infrasound and ultrasound, of the latter we continue to expand its range of applications and this time we move to the essential field of medicine, where ultrasound has left its traces.

Some applications of Ultrasound in medicine

We know that any scientific-technological application towards the well-being of our body will be received by all of us in the best possible way, and this is the case of ultrasound and its valuable application in medicine, where, without a doubt, ultrasound has become an efficient tool that allows us to generate high quality images of the inside of our body.

In addition, my reader friends, they also represent a wonderful therapeutic means, where it is important to highlight that one of the most important examples of the application of ultrasonic waves is found in obstetric ultrasound.

In a very general way we can say that technology has managed to design machines that generate ultrasound, and for this, they use a piezoelectric crystal (such as quartz), where the crystal vibrates in order to generate ultrasonic sound waves intermittently, and these are transmitted through the interior of our body, where parts of these waves will be reflected when encountering an obstacle (such as some of our organs).

In relation to the above described we can continue expressing that this type of ultrasonic waves are able to propagate in those structures that have material or elastic media such as water, that is why this technique is not used in the study of bony structures (bones) or organs with significant air cavities.

Therefore, low intensity ultrasound waves, when reflected or originating echoes, generate images known as ultrasound scans or echograms, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 below.

_{Figure 1. Obstetrical ultrasound, ultrasound of a baby girl, image property of the author : @rbalzan79}

_{Figure 2. 3D ultrasound of a baby, this image is property of the author :@rbalzan79}

Undoubtedly my reader friends, each of us can identify with the above images, and even more if we are parents, which is why this type of ultrasound application is wonderful and very useful because it allows us to get in touch with our babies in full development when they are in the womb of their mothers.

Continuing in the field of care of our body, we can say that we find another application of ultrasound, in this case for therapeutic use, for example, the application of ultrasound to reduce the size of kidney stones, as well as for the treatment of tendinitis which is achieved through vibrations of our tissues as we can see in Figure 3 below.

_{Figure 3 . Ultrasound as a therapeutic tool}

Therefore, each of us can be reliable witnesses of the usefulness of ultrasound in the area of medicine, and this because at any time of our existence we have used this technology or at least someone close to us, this undoubtedly makes us highlight the enormous work of the scientific-technological field for the welfare of our health body, as in this case.

Until another opportunity my dear friends, it will always be of vital importance to be able to share some kind of knowledge through this prestigious platform, and also highlighting the importance of essential phenomena such as sound and its various frequencies, as in this case the ultrasound.

Note: The images are of my authorship and were elaborated using Power Point and the animated gif was elaborated with the PhotoScape application, the images 1 and 2 are real ultrasounds of a girl, and these images are property of the author delivered by the treating physician in digital format.