Ultrasound is a sound wave with wave length inaudible to human years. Its limit varies from person to person, however, as to estimated scientific calculation it is 20 kilohertz (20,000) in healthy young and adults. Due to its unique nature ultrasound is used in a wide range of areas. However, the most common and prevalent use of ultrasound is in the field of sonography to generate images of fetuses in the human womb. There are many other applications of ultrasound too. Following are certain areas where ultrasound is used extensively.
Medical Sonography: This is a technique where an ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging is employed to see muscles, tendons, and many other internal body organs. This help to assess the size, structure and any pathological lesions with real time tomographic images. This technique is also used in diagnosis of fetus during routine and emergency prenatal care. This technique is performed by health care professionals known as to be sonographers. Obstetric sonography is used extensively during pregnancy. It is an inexpensive technique compared with MRI and CT.
Industrial ultrasound: This is the ultrasound technique which is used for the industrial assessment of things especially non destructive testing of a swing displaying spline cracking. It is used for checking out flaws in materials and assessing thickness of objects. This technique is used both in manual as well as automated inspection of metal sheet during manufacturing processes. Lower frequent ultrasound (50-100 kHz) is used for inspecting lesser denser substances like wood, concrete and cement.
Ultrasonic cleaning: They are known to be as supersonic cleaners and are used around frequencies of 20-40 kHz for jewellery, lenses and devices like watches, dental instruments, surgical instruments, diving regulators and industrial parts. The device known to be ultrasonic cleaner works on by energy released from the attack of millions of microscopic cavitations near the dirty surface.
Ultrasonic humidifier: It is a type of humidifier that works upon vibrating a metal plate at ultrasonic frequencies to nebulize the water as it is not heated for evaporation and creates the cool mist. It not only nebulize water but also other materials present in water like calcium, minerals viruses, fungi, bacteria and other impurities.
Ultrasound Identification (USID): Ultrasound Identification (USID) is a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) or Indoor Positioning System (IPS) which is used for automatic tracking and identification of objects in real time using inexpensive nodes attached to objective and devices that transmit an ultrasound signal to communicate location of objects on microphone sensors.
Sonochemistry: Ultrasound waves in the range of 20-100 kHz range is used in chemistry to occur a chemical change as its wavelength is compared with the molecules and thus it works as catalyst to increase the speed of molecules.
3D Ultrasound: It is an ultrasound technique which is used during pregnancy to obtain three dimensional images of the fetus. Many times these images are captured at the fast pace and then are further produced into a 4D ultrasound.
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