B-MODE ULTRASOUND

Real-Time B-Mode in Ultrasound

Real-time B-mode in ultrasound

Introduction History and background

Ultrasound is more commonly known as sonography. It is a mode mostly used for biomedical imaging. It can be used for a wide variety of clinical applications. The phenomenon involved behind the working of medical ultrasound is the conduction and transmission of high frequency sound into the body. This transmission is further explainable by the reception, processing and parametric display of echoes that returns from tissues present in the body. Ultrasound is responsible for creating a cross-sectional image of a body tissue. It is in general terms a real-time tomographic modality. It provides a quantitative analysis and imaging of flow of blood (W.F. Walker et al, 1998).

Ultrasound is more commonly known as sonography. It is a mode mostly used for biomedical imaging. It can be used for a wide variety of clinical applications The phenomenon involved behind the working of medical ultrasound is the conduction and transmission of high frequency sound into the body. This transmission is further exploited by the reception, processing and parametric display of echoes that returns from tissues present in the body. Ultrasound is responsible for creating a cross-sectional image of a body tissue. It is in general terms a real-time tomographic modality. It provides a quantitative analysis and imaging of flow of blood (W.F. Walker et al, 1998).

The history behind the discovery of ultrasound waves started with the publication of The Theory of Sound by Lord Rayleigh in 1877. However, the practical use was in World War One initially for the detection of submarines. It is first clinical use was for detecting brain tumors, which was experimented by Karl Dussik and Friederich Dussik in 1942. They used it as a medical diagnostic tool for the first time to image the brain. Real time imaging Siemens device produced the first ever gray-scale images in 1968 (W. F. Walker, 1998).

Our topic that we have focused in this essay is real time B mode ultrasound that produces a two-dimensional image on the screen. It is most commonly used and utilizes a linear array of transducers and concurrently scans a specific plane through the body thereby producing a real time image of it on screen. Now ultrasound is the most extensively used imaging technique in the field of medicine. Magnetic resonance and computed tomographic techniques are quite expensive as compared to ultrasound technique. So it is relatively economical as compared to other imaging modalities. As it provides instant images, it can be used for many interventional measures, such as regional anesthesia or pain management (Edler I et al, 2004).

Fig 1: Ultrasound System Block Diagram (Data retrieved from http://www.ti.com/)

Discussion

1. The physical phenomena, instrumentation and performance of ultrasound systems operating in this mode

The physical phenomenon involved is based on the linear systems theory. It involves the use of different types of frequency domains i.e. spatial and temporal methods for analyzing procedures. However, spatial frequency domain is more widely used technique, it is also called an ...