And start doing these 5 things instead to make your ultrasound images shine… Here’s what you should (and shouldn’t) do when performing an Aorta Ultrasound… Table of contents #1- STOP MIXING UP THE AORTA AND THE IVC Keys to Identifying the Aorta Keys to Identifying the IVC #2- STOP TAKING OFF-AXIS IMAGES OF THE AORTA HOW TO ENSURE YOUR AORTA IMAGES ARE ON-AXIS Capturing On-Axis Images of the Aorta in Sagittal Creating On-Axis Images of the Aorta in Transverse # 3- STOP THESE 3 AORTA ULTRASOUND MEASUREMENT FAILS THREE: NOT MEASURING 90 DEGREES PERPENDICULAR TO THE VESSEL WALLS HERE’S HOW ..read more

If you’re new to Breast Ultrasound it can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! This step-by-step Breast Ultrasound roadmap will help you conquer this exam, and ensure that you don’t miss anything important along the way. Have you ever faced an Ultrasound exam that you’ve never done before and felt completely lost? As you stare at the unfamiliar anatomy on the image, you find yourself struggling to remember back to that elusive lecture back in your school days. I’ve been there! I learned Breast Ultrasound the hard way, on the job, with archaic textbooks and through lots of trial and m ..read more

Wondering how to measure a breast mass on an Ultrasound? Here’s 10 strategies for measuring just about any type of breast mass you’ll ever encounter. Figuring out how to measure a breast mass with well defined borders on an Ultrasound can seem straightforward. But are you truly measuring it the correct way? In a manner that ensures that the size and the shape of the mass are not underestimated? And how should those measurements change when a mass has an irregular shape or margins, or is located within a milk duct? Should those findings be included within the measurements of the mass? Let’s exp ..read more

Understanding Doppler Ultrasound can feel like scaling Mount Everest, especially when you’re just beginning your ultrasound journey. Let’s demystify Doppler! Here’s 9 secrets to the perfect image from a seasoned Sonographer. Doppler angle, box steering, sample volume size, direction of flow, color gain, PRF, Nyquist limit, spectral Doppler, positive and negative Doppler shifts, angle correct. These are just a handful of the terms that confront us when we are first learning Doppler. Doppler tends to be one of the most complicated subjects to wrap our brains around in ultrasound, but it doesn’t ..read more

Great knobology is the heart of an ultrasound exam. But we are only as good as what we know. This 4-part series will explore 20 essential ultrasound controls that can make or break an ultrasound image. This is Part 1 of a 4 part Essential Ultrasound Controls Every Sonographer Should Know Series. See the overview here. Confession time! I was a Sonographer for over a year before I knew how to fully utilize each of the 20 ultrasound controls that we will cover in this 4 part series. Ultrasound school is 2 years of information overload. Pump the information in and then dump it out quickly, to get ..read more

This is Part 4 of the 4 part Essential Ultrasound Controls Every Sonographer Should Know Series. See the overview here. Time to continue along in our journey of learning the art of great Ultrasound knobology. When a challenging scan comes our way, knowing how to utilize the Ultrasound controls in front of us can make or break the quality of the images that we produce. Let’s Ultrasound… Essential Ultrasound Control 16: Harmonics Harmonics is a control on the Ultrasound machine which is either on or off on some machines, and is tied to the Frequency control on other machines. Meaning that when F ..read more

This is Part 2 of a 4 part Essential Ultrasound Controls Every Sonographer Should Know Series. See the overview here. Join me for this 4-part series as we learn the ins and outs of the controls on an Ultrasound machine. An Ultrasound image is only as great as the knobology behind it. Let’s learn the steps to make your Ultrasound images shine… Essential Ultrasound Control 6: Reverse Image Why would an Ultrasound image have a reverse button? And what in the world is a “reversed” image? To find out, we first need to explore how an Ultrasound image is formed. How An Ultrasound Image Is Compiled An ..read more

This is Part 3 of the 4 part “Essential Ultrasound Controls Every Sonographer Should Know” Series. See the overview here. Essential Ultrasound Control 11: Power Doppler Doppler time! Let’s dive in and explore the 3 types of Doppler: what they are, what each of them do, and the components unique to each of them. But first, let’s explore Doppler itself… Doppler Defined Doppler is a tool that measures either the strength of a Doppler signal or a shift in it’s frequency, which allows us to interrogate blood flow patterns within the body on Ultrasound. A pulse is sent into the body (transmitted fre ..read more