Ultrasound Waves

The human ear may be an amazing organ but there are sound waves that it is incapable of picking up. Ultrasound waves have a frequency greater than the upper limit of what a human ear can hear and are used in a wide variety of fields but perhaps their most famous use is in the production of ultrasound pictures of an unborn baby; a technique known as sonography.

Ultrasound works by revealing a picture of a baby in a human womb by penetrating the baby and measuring its size and structure and forming the information that it finds into a picture with the help of a computer. There is much confusion over how harmful ultrasound waves are, with many experts claiming they are harmful to the development of a baby’s brain and others declaring that they cause no harm at all.

However, much of the medical world would agree that if the ultrasound was needed for medical reasons then the benefits outweigh the risks. The waves pick up the tendons, muscles and internal organs and allow us to see the structure and size of all of these body parts and the baby itself.

During the prenatal care of a mother and baby, sonograms produced from ultrasound waves are used as a general routine in the care procedure and they are usually performed by a professional sonographer, doctor or nurse. The technology is hailed as one of the most widely used diagnostic techniques throughout the world due to its inexpensiveness and portability.