The prudent use of ultrasound requires a constant consideration of the risk-benefit ratio for the patient and the conditions of its use along with the employment of the so called alara principle. Alara stands for as low as reasonably achievableќ. This means that the sonographer only as much ultrasonic power for as long as needed to obtain the necessary clinical information. With training, education, and experience, the sonographer can systematically keep the patient risks for potential boi effects if ultrasound down to a minimum. This means using ultrasound as an effective and often essential source of diagnostic information and not as a source of entertainment.
The applications of ultrasound are growing in proportion to design improvements that satisfy specific scanning need. It's also growing in proportion to the imagination of users who experiment and perfect scanning techniques. Understanding the physics of ultrasound & how it affects the basic technologies & instrumentation extends our understanding of how to use the existing & new technologies and instruments as they come available to the user.
Regardless the technology, echo-ranging and Doppler principles remain largely unchanged as fundamental physical processes. Improvements in transducer technology, computer control, and display technology stand to make the techniques even more effective. Even with these improvements, many of the artifacts that arise out of tissue ultrasound interactions have to be understood to avoid making diagnostic errors. The technologies may be better, bur events like reverberations and multipath reflections will continue to plaque the sonographer. And, equipment that is maladjusted or out of registration will still cloud decision-making and diagnosis. Only good techniques and properly adjusted equipment will prevent these artifacts from inserting confusion and error into reading an ultrasound image.
And that brings us to the issue of the seven ways of keeping your imaging balance. The crashed bikes are ready reminders, but we can put these opportunities to crash an image into a slightly different order to keep yourself alert while scanning.
Simply follow the ultrasound in and out of the tissue and into the sonograph.
In short, keep your imaging balance by keeping these seven point of imaging in mind.