An Animal Hospital Serving Maryland

Ultrasounds? Why would a veterinarian use or need ultrasound machines?

First, an Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Although this upper limit varies from person to person, it is approximately 20 kilohertz (20,000 hertz) in healthy, young adults.

The production of ultrasound is used in many different fields to penetrate a medium and measure the reflection signature or supply focused energy.

That's the technical jargon that you don't really need to know about. What's important is that, in a veterinary services application, the reflection signature can reveal details about the inner structure of the medium. If that medium was an animal, a pregnancy ultrasound would reveal whether or not it was pregnant. Ultrasounds have been used to detect cancer in dogs, animal pregnancies and even to detect vascular inconsistencies. The veterinary ultrasounds produce by the machines are very similar to the "radar-like" signals used by bats to hunt.

We've all seen the ultrasound application in human hospitals where it's called sonography, a process used to produce pictures of fetuses in the human womb. We are dealing with the same thing here.

Universal Ultrasound

Universal Ultrasound is one of the main companies supplying the medical field, both human and animal with diagnostic ultrasound solutions for over three decades. As a result, the vast majority of used ultrasound machines in circulation bear the Universal brand. Their lines include both 3D and 4D-ultrasound machines. The modern veterinarian may even have some form of portable ultrasound machines at their disposal. Made by Universal.

Universal Ultrasound has more veterinary customers than any other imaging equipment company. Universal has formed strategic alliances with a broad array of quality manufacturers to provide the latest in imaging technologies, their latest merger being that with Classic Medical. Together they supply more types of ultrasound machines than either was able to do by themselves.

Ultrasound machines have proven themselves to be essential to the veterinary profession. Today, a canine ultrasound is as just a routine a procedure as a dog teeth cleaning or a spay procedure on your cat. Other ultrasound applications are available for a wide range of situations such as aquatic and marine mammals, exotics and lab animals, and for the entire spectrum of zoo, farm and even wild animals.

Ultrasounds are just another example of the adaptation of technology made specifically for the human species being applied to lengthen and improve the quality of life in our other family members, out pets.