Medical sonography (ultrasonography) is a useful ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging technique used to visualize muscles, tendons, and many internal organs, their size, structure and any pathological lesions. They are also used to visualize a fetus during pregnancy. Ultrasound scans are performed by medical health care professionals called sonographers. Obstetric sonography is commonly used during pregnancy.
- Ultrasound is generally regarded as a "safe test" because it does not use ionising radiation as in x-rays, nuclear medicine, or CT. But is a form of energy and scans should only be performed for a suitable medical indication by trained operators sonographer. Scans performed for baby photos are considered by the profession to be unethical.
- The biggest danger of ultrasound is often considered to be misdiagnosis by untrained operators.
- A study on rodent fetus brains that are exposed to ultrasound showed signs of damage. Speculation on human fetuses can be in a range of no significant complications to variety of mental and brain disorder. The study shows that rodent brain cells failed to grow to their proper position and remained scattered in incorrect parts of the brain. The conditions of this experiemnt are different form typical fetal scanning because of the long dwell times. Care should be taken to use low power settings and avoid pulsed wave scanning of the fetal brain unless specically indicated in high risk pregnancies.
