Ultrasound

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Ultrasound imaging is to the soft tissues of the body what radiology is to the bones. Introduced to veterinary medicine in the early 1980's, ultrasound has enabled veterinarians to “see” and separate soft tissue structures such as tendons, ligaments, muscles and the organs. Ultrasound is simply the process of sending sound waves of different frequencies from the ultrasound transducer into the body and when those sound waves are reflected back they are processed into a one dimensional image. The image is composed of many pixels of different “shades of grey”, which is the reflection of the sound traveling through tissues of different densities. For example water or blood is black (anechoic), and a dense ligament would appear almost totally white (hyper-echoic). Ultrasound waves however will not penetrate bone or air. Ultrasound imaging is actually much more sensitive than radiology at detecting bone surface abnormalities and is very useful to evaluate the attachments of ligaments and tendons to bone.

I have always had a keen interest in ultrasound and have pioneered injection techniques using ultrasound to guide the needle into the area of concern, most notably my technique for injection of the navicular bursa. My ultrasound machine today is the mobil digital laptop type made by Toshiba.

As technology improves I will remain at the forefront with the most up-to-date equipment available.