Determine if there are multiple fetuses.Check the fetus’s age and growth to determine the due date.Assess the viability of a pregnancy, meaning likely to carry to term.
Ultrasound is the standard of care for screening for abnormalities and monitoring pregnancy because it is considered safe, noninvasive, painless, and yields immediate and extensive results. Image of the fetal head from Donald’s 1958 paper published in the Lancet. Ian Donald at work with the Mark 3 Diasonograph in 1960, jokingly referred to as the Dinosaurograph. Today, with developments in ultrasound expertise and technology, ultrasound can reveal dozens of parameters critical to fetal health and development - in 2D, 3D, and 4D (quasi-video) images. In the early days of ultrasound, clinicians could only detect the baby’s head. īy the end of the 1950s, ultrasound was routinely used in Glasgow hospitals, but it didn't catch on in British and American hospitals until the 1970s.
The paper Donald and Brown published in the Lancet in 1958 on this new technology was like a shot heard around the world: from Denver to Deutschland, Vienna to Japan, Copenhagen to Australia, the race was on to advance and perfect this compelling technology. Nevertheless, it had by far the best resolution at the time. It was 8 feet high and took up about a third of the scanning room, prompting many to call it, uncharitably, the Dinosaurograph. The Diasonograph, as they called it, was developed by Scottish OBGYN Ian Donald and an engineer named Tom Brown. The first clinical use of ultrasound occurred in Glasgow in 1956, using a prototype modeled on an instrument designed to detect industrial flaws in ships. In pregnancy, the ultrasound monitors fetal development and screens for potential problems for the fetus and the mother. The transducer picks up these reflected sound waves and changes them into images. In obstetric ultrasonography, a device called a transducer directs these ultrasonic sound waves at the mother’s womb, where they bounce off the tissues and structures there like an echo. The word ultrasound refers to a pressure wave with a frequency beyond (“ultra”) what is detectable by humans. How does ultrasound work and what does it measure? Are there different types of ultrasounds? When should I have an ultrasound? What’s the latest ultrasound technology? To answer these questions, let’s start at the beginning. These images are the first red flag when there are potentially life-threatening issues for mother or baby.įrom a purely emotional standpoint, before the belly begins to show signs of pregnancy, those iconic, black-and-white images of the developing fetus rendered via ultrasound imaging make the pregnancy suddenly seem very real. For most pregnant women today, it’s hard to imagine going through pregnancy without ultrasound imaging to monitor the baby’s progress and detect abnormalities characteristic of potential disorders.
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