What is an ultrasound?
What is an ultrasound?
Sure, it's amazing to see pre-birth baby- but how exactly does ultrasound technology work?
By the YeahBaby.com editorial staff
For many women, pregnancy is their first experience with ultrasound technology. Seeing images of their baby for the first time can be very exciting and emotional. But how does an ultrasound really work?
During the ultrasound process, sound waves are bounced off the skin and tissues of your fetus. The sound wave echoes return to the ultrasound machine. The ultrasound machine creates images based on the speed and strength of the echoes. This technology is similar to how bats, dolphins and whales communicate. It's also similar to SONAR technology used in submarines.
Specifically in a pregnancy ultrasound
- High-frequency sound pulses are transmitted by the ultrasound machine using a probe. The waves vary from 1 to 5 megahertzes.
- These sound waves travel through your body until they hit a point between tissues of different density (for example, the point between soft tissue and bone.)
- Some of the sound waves will hit a boundary and get sent back to the probe. Other sound waves keep going until they hit another boundary.
- The waves picked up by the probe are sent back to the ultrasound machine.
- The ultrasound machine calculates the distance from the probe to the different tissue and bones, based on the time it takes an echo to return to the probe.
- Using the data calculated by the machine, a 2-dimensional image is made. What you see is an image of your baby.
Depending on where the probe is placed, many different images of a fetus are possible. Now the big question- does baby have dad or mom's nose?
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