Medical Ultrasound

Medical ultrasound covers both diagnostic imaging techniques and therapeutic applications that use high-frequency sound waves, with the images it produces called ultrasonograms or sonograms and the machine itself known as an ultrasound machine or sonograph, commonly used to examine tendons, muscles, joints, blood vessels and internal organs. The physician Ian Donald pioneered its clinical use in obstetrics in the late 1950s and 1960s, establishing fetal ultrasound as a routine tool for monitoring pregnancy and detecting complications. In 1968, Raymond Gramiak discovered that encapsulated gas microbubbles could increase the echogenicity of blood, a finding that led to contrast-enhanced ultrasound, a technique now used worldwide to sharpen ultrasound images.