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Abdominal ultrasound
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An abdominal ultrasound sends sound waves into the upper abdomen. That sound strikes the structures inside and comes back as echoes, and the machine builds the image out of those echoes. What appears on the screen comes from sound that traveled back, like shouting into a canyon and hearing your own voice answer back.
Diagnostic ultrasound does not use ionizing radiation. The very way it makes an image depends on sound waves and echoes, and that is the basic difference from tests that do use that kind of radiation.
In brief
Abdominal ultrasound sends sound waves into the upper abdomen. Echoes coming back from the structures there are turned into images, so the picture is built from sound that travels back to the machine.
A wave travels out, meets a structure, and some of the sound returns as an echo that helps form the image.
Diagnostic ultrasound does not use ionizing radiation. It creates images with sound waves and echoes, and that is a fundamental difference between it and imaging methods that do use ionizing radiation.
Sources (2)
- American College of Radiology and Radiological Society of North AmericaAbdominal Ultrasound ExamPublished
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and BioengineeringUltrasound
This page explains the topic in general terms; it does not tell anyone what treatment to follow.
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