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How Ultrasound Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
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Speaker 1: it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
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Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:02
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
1:05
Speaker 1: Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there flying solo, batching it up.
1:10
Speaker 1: It's a stag party up in this piece, and this
1:14
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Remember the Happy Days where
1:19
Speaker 1: they had a stag party. Ritchie and Pozzy and Ralph
1:22
Speaker 1: Mouth went to a stag party with I think Richie's
1:25
Speaker 1: older brother who I believe his named Chuck. I think
1:29
Speaker 1: his name was Chuck, But I don't remember what happened.
1:31
Speaker 1: I sort of remember that episode. I think they just
1:33
Speaker 1: got a little freaked out, a little titillated, aroused, and
1:36
Speaker 1: then freaked out. I think it sounds like what would
1:38
Speaker 1: have happened. Did Fonzie fix a juke box by hitting
1:41
Speaker 1: with this fist? I think that even may have been
1:44
Speaker 1: pre jukebox Fonzie. I don't even know that he was
1:47
Speaker 1: wearing a leather coat at the time. He may have
1:49
Speaker 1: just been wearing that weird gray jacket that he wore
1:52
Speaker 1: at first. Yeah, like the mechanics jacket. And that would
1:54
Speaker 1: make sense because I think Chuck was only in the
1:57
Speaker 1: early days of the Happy Days, the happiest days, right.
2:00
Speaker 1: But then remember they like killed him off, like pretty graphically.
2:04
Speaker 1: He suffered from dysenterry for basically three straight episodes, and
2:08
Speaker 1: like that's all they focused on, and then he finally
2:11
Speaker 1: just died and they said, man, this is called happy Days.
2:14
Speaker 1: I think we need to just get rid of them. Yeah.
2:16
Speaker 1: I think they changed their show runner after that. So, um,
2:20
Speaker 1: we're talking about ultrasound right now. And if you had Dysenterry,
2:25
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely convinced that ultrasound would help. But let's
2:30
Speaker 1: say you had it a kidney stone instead, Friend, ultrasound
2:34
Speaker 1: would help with that kind of thing. Yeah, they could.
2:37
Speaker 1: They could sniff out of kidney stone. Yeah they can.
2:40
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact. Well, what's funny is they
2:42
Speaker 1: do everything but sniff. They used to sound and they
2:45
Speaker 1: used vision. I used the wrong. Uh, they don't sniffer take.
2:50
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that was great. Should be good. So, um, ultrasound.
2:54
Speaker 1: Everybody knows what ultrasound is. Just about everybody seeing an
2:57
Speaker 1: ultrasound picture. Um, you see little babies like in the
3:01
Speaker 1: womb developing and they're getting all cute and everything, or
3:05
Speaker 1: else you see them really early on and they're not
3:06
Speaker 1: at all cute. Um. But either way, I think everybody
3:10
Speaker 1: is pretty familiar with ultrasound. UM, and I was too,
3:14
Speaker 1: but I still learned quite a bit from this incredibly
3:17
Speaker 1: outdated article by Craig freud and Rich PhD. Yeah, and
3:23
Speaker 1: you're speaking specifically of what's known as a sonogram. Uh.
3:28
Speaker 1: When a device that you know, we're going to talk
3:31
Speaker 1: about this in more detail, but a device called a
3:35
Speaker 1: transducer probe has either put on you or in you,
3:41
Speaker 1: depending on what depending on what they're after or how
3:45
Speaker 1: close they need to get sure. Yeah. Absolutely, and then
3:51
Speaker 1: what well, I mean, you know, I can speak from experience.
3:55
Speaker 1: One of the best things in the world is when
3:58
Speaker 1: you see that first little picture of baby and heart beating. Uh.
4:03
Speaker 1: And then the worst moment is when you go in
4:05
Speaker 1: there and get one and that heart isn't beating. Yeah.
4:08
Speaker 1: And it's a un nerving moment when you go in
4:10
Speaker 1: there for that stuff. And like I said, it can
4:13
Speaker 1: be it can It feels both great and terrible and
4:15
Speaker 1: I've I've experienced all. Yeah. But the thing is about
4:19
Speaker 1: ultrasound chuck um is most people think that it's that's
4:24
Speaker 1: what it used for us just check on babies, But
4:26
Speaker 1: it's used for a whole bunch of other stuff as well,
4:28
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about. And they're starting to find even
4:31
Speaker 1: more um cutting edge techniques for it too. So it's
4:35
Speaker 1: actually pretty interesting stuff. And the whole thing magically is
4:39
Speaker 1: centered on crystals that are actually hidden in the incredibly
4:43
Speaker 1: greatly named transducer probe, and they actually, you know, in
4:48
Speaker 1: a way squeeze these crystals. And when you squeeze crystals,
4:51
Speaker 1: especially ones that have in irregular shape, they do something amazing.
4:55
Speaker 1: They produce energy vibrations in this case, and so by
5:00
Speaker 1: squeezing the crystal of of vibration of sound goes out
5:05
Speaker 1: very high frequency sounds. Und it is it is ultrasound
5:10
Speaker 1: um on the order of something like this article says
5:12
Speaker 1: one to five mega hurts, but I saw two to
5:16
Speaker 1: twenty is much more standard, and it hurts. Is how
5:21
Speaker 1: many of the same part of a of a wavelength
5:25
Speaker 1: of you know, sound or something like that would pass
5:29
Speaker 1: by a space a point in space every second. So
5:32
Speaker 1: in this case, say like the crest of these wavelengths,
5:35
Speaker 1: these ultrasound wavelengths um, the something like twenty million of
5:41
Speaker 1: their crests would pass by one point in space in
5:45
Speaker 1: one second, very very high frequency, very very tight um,
5:49
Speaker 1: which makes them very very energetic. So those are the
5:53
Speaker 1: vibrations the sound that is produced by squeezing crystals. And
5:57
Speaker 1: you would think just squeezing chrys souls is pretty pretty great.
6:01
Speaker 1: Let's just give this thing a blue ribbon for being
6:04
Speaker 1: a wonderful piece of technology. But it gets even better
6:07
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about the
6:10
Speaker 1: fact that there's a machine that then calculates these distances
6:15
Speaker 1: from the probe to whatever it's trying to measure and
6:18
Speaker 1: then basically can create a two and now even three
6:23
Speaker 1: dimensional picture of that, it seems like magic. It does,
6:28
Speaker 1: especially because those those sound waves that propagate from the
6:32
Speaker 1: crystal being squeezed, which I like to think of is
6:35
Speaker 1: the crystals being squeezed, and it's making the sound and delight.
6:39
Speaker 1: It's not like a painful, painful sound that it's like,
6:42
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, it feels great. Um. So those
6:47
Speaker 1: sound waves, when they travel into the body, they hit
6:50
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. They hit um, tissue, they hit
6:54
Speaker 1: um liquid, they hit everything and that's everything bone, yeah
6:58
Speaker 1: and um. The the higher frequency of a wave, the
7:04
Speaker 1: more likely it is to bounce back. So the a
7:07
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff bounces back. And when it bounces back, chuck,
7:10
Speaker 1: it comes right back into those crystals, and when it
7:14
Speaker 1: hits those crystals, it actually produces electricity, and then that
7:18
Speaker 1: electrical impulse is what's converted into through some sort of
7:22
Speaker 1: black magic that I have a lot of trouble wrapping
7:24
Speaker 1: my head around into images. So sound gets translated into
7:28
Speaker 1: images via electrical impulses. And at the heart of it
7:31
Speaker 1: all are those crystals. Yeah. I think if you were
7:34
Speaker 1: to ask your average person if an ultrasound like just
7:40
Speaker 1: a yes or no question, like an ultrasound does it
7:43
Speaker 1: use actual crystals to produce an image, you would probably
7:47
Speaker 1: get laughed out of the room by nine out of
7:49
Speaker 1: ten people and say, of course it doesn't. That's some
7:51
Speaker 1: sort of weird wiccan hoke um right, that you're trying
7:56
Speaker 1: to sell me on. It's it's not real, but it's remarkable.
7:59
Speaker 1: I hadn't no idea that it uses crystals. Yeah. I
8:03
Speaker 1: think this machine is actually second only to um the
8:08
Speaker 1: breathalyzer machine in in surprising complexity man and I and
8:13
Speaker 1: I presume the ultrasaw machine was pretty complex. But yeah,
8:17
Speaker 1: I had no idea that they were squeezing crystals in there. Yeah.
8:20
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty two, there was a neurologist who used
8:25
Speaker 1: ultrasonic waves as a as a tool as a diagnostic
8:28
Speaker 1: tool for the first time named Karl with a Kadu
8:31
Speaker 1: sick and he was trying to search for brain tumors
8:35
Speaker 1: through someone's skull. And I think it was not until
8:38
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, so about sixteen years later fifty eight
8:42
Speaker 1: that it was first used for a sonogram with Dr
8:45
Speaker 1: Ian Donald. Yeah. And the great advantage of ultrasound is
8:49
Speaker 1: that you're just you're sending sound waves, which are mechanical
8:52
Speaker 1: in nature into the body. UM. You're not using ionizing
8:57
Speaker 1: radiation like X rays, UM, So you're not going to
9:00
Speaker 1: like produce tumors necessarily, there's not You're just not exposed
9:05
Speaker 1: to being exposed to radiation energy. You're being exposed to
9:08
Speaker 1: mechanical energy again, just acoustic waves of sound. But what's
9:12
Speaker 1: amazing about this is that that that sound, those echoes
9:16
Speaker 1: from that sound that bounce off of the different barriers
9:19
Speaker 1: or what they're called, say like between blood and tissue,
9:22
Speaker 1: a tissue and bone, as they bounce back up and
9:25
Speaker 1: they're converted into images you can see into the human
9:30
Speaker 1: body without using X rays and without cutting somebody open.
9:35
Speaker 1: So it was an enormous advance that I think really
9:38
Speaker 1: gets overlooked, um at least by the general public, as
9:42
Speaker 1: far as medical advances go like, it was huge when
9:45
Speaker 1: we figured out how to do this. Yeah, And that's
9:48
Speaker 1: why if you ever go to get a sonogram or
9:50
Speaker 1: something like this and they show you an image of
9:53
Speaker 1: your little bread love baking in the oven, and you
9:57
Speaker 1: catch yourself in your head thinking looks kind of crutty
10:01
Speaker 1: to me, just put your foot in the door and
10:04
Speaker 1: slam it real quick, and make sure you don't say
10:07
Speaker 1: that out loud in front of anyone in the room,
10:09
Speaker 1: because it is truly a little miracle machine just to
10:11
Speaker 1: get an image that looks that crutty, right, especially, don't
10:15
Speaker 1: say it in front of Karl Dusick. No, it would
10:18
Speaker 1: really hurt this feeling. And all of this, I mean,
10:21
Speaker 1: this stuff is remarkable because it's the same concept of
10:25
Speaker 1: just the sonar that we use in the military and
10:28
Speaker 1: the sonar that bats use. Yeah. And as a matter
10:30
Speaker 1: of fact, like our understanding of um echolocation, which is
10:35
Speaker 1: ultimately what it's based on, it's shooting out sound and
10:38
Speaker 1: then listening for the echoes and then taking the information
10:41
Speaker 1: that those echoes bring back to judge things like distance, shape, size,
10:45
Speaker 1: all the stuff. You can get a lot of information
10:47
Speaker 1: from sound if you know how to use echolocation. That's
10:51
Speaker 1: what's happening. We're squeezing crystals to make this sound. And
10:53
Speaker 1: then in turn, after they shout, they turn into ears
10:57
Speaker 1: listening for the echoes that come back, and the echoes
11:00
Speaker 1: that come back ultimately become those white or bright or
11:04
Speaker 1: light areas on a sonogram. Um that that form like
11:08
Speaker 1: the shape, those are the echo. Yeah, and it's way better.
11:11
Speaker 1: The very first uh sonograms, they would get boxes of bats.
11:16
Speaker 1: They would open the lid and throw it over the
11:19
Speaker 1: pregnant belly very fast, right, let them fly around for
11:22
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes, and then take those bats into
11:25
Speaker 1: another room and give them pads of paper and pencils,
11:28
Speaker 1: and said to draw what you heard. And bats are
11:30
Speaker 1: actually pretty good at drawing, most of them are. It's surprising,
11:34
Speaker 1: honestly that it looks about as good as the current sonogram. Yeah,
11:38
Speaker 1: so I guess you're not a big you're not super
11:41
Speaker 1: impressed by the resolution. You know, it's fine, Like I said,
11:44
Speaker 1: when you when you realize what's going on, it's truly
11:47
Speaker 1: a miracle. And and the three D ones, yeah, I
11:50
Speaker 1: mean those are kind of creepily accurate, right they are.
11:55
Speaker 1: They have a little uncanny valley thing going on. But
11:57
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but they definitely do. But that's
12:01
Speaker 1: a huge advance in ultrasound because, like originally in ultrasound,
12:04
Speaker 1: especially if you just see the flat one that almost
12:07
Speaker 1: looks like a grainy X ray or something like that,
12:10
Speaker 1: but you're seeing something like soft tissue. That's another advantage
12:13
Speaker 1: of ultrasound over X ray. X ray typically shows much
12:17
Speaker 1: harder stuff, whereas an ultrasound card. So you even like blood,
12:21
Speaker 1: something is as um non dense dense lists. Uh, what's
12:28
Speaker 1: the opposite of dense this guess loose Yeah, lucy, Even
12:35
Speaker 1: as something is as anatomically lucy goosey as blood. Um,
12:40
Speaker 1: the ultrasound can capture that because of the high frequency
12:44
Speaker 1: and the other The other great thing about using high
12:46
Speaker 1: frequency is that or the other reason we use high
12:49
Speaker 1: frequency is the higher the frequency, the greater the resolution.
12:53
Speaker 1: And it's not a perfect analogy, but it's similar to
12:57
Speaker 1: how if you increase the magnet shoote of a microscope
13:01
Speaker 1: you can see smaller and smaller stuff. It's very much
13:05
Speaker 1: similar to higher the frequency of say sound in an
13:09
Speaker 1: ultrasound machine, the more finely detailed, the more resolution you
13:13
Speaker 1: can have. The problem is is that the those higher
13:18
Speaker 1: energy um uh wavelengths tend to bounce back, tend to
13:23
Speaker 1: reflect very easily, lower energy travels further and further through
13:27
Speaker 1: the body. So what they figured out is you can
13:29
Speaker 1: combine these and that's how you ultimately get three D imaging,
13:33
Speaker 1: which we'll talk a little more about in a minute.
13:36
Speaker 1: You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
13:38
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back and talk about all the
13:39
Speaker 1: parts of this. I was about to call it the
13:41
Speaker 1: wonder machine, but we already have one of those, the
13:43
Speaker 1: miracle machine. Miracle machines. Good, all right, right after this, alright,
14:09
Speaker 1: so the miracle machine has uh and you know, they
14:13
Speaker 1: don't explain any of this stuff. They basically, you know,
14:16
Speaker 1: you go in there and they're just like, hey, this
14:18
Speaker 1: thing works. Uh, this is a bit of black magic.
14:22
Speaker 1: And just sit back and and open up and here
14:25
Speaker 1: comes the probe. Yeah, we um. I think we should
14:28
Speaker 1: go over the list that appears in this article that
14:32
Speaker 1: was apparently written by Franz Kafka. Yeah, all right, we
14:36
Speaker 1: have to, okay, agreed. I have a feeling you're talking
14:40
Speaker 1: about the final few things about what happens during an
14:44
Speaker 1: ultrasound examination. Oh that part. Yeah, sure, okay, alright, so
14:48
Speaker 1: you got your transducer probe, which we already talked about
14:52
Speaker 1: a little bit, and that is the thing that the
14:55
Speaker 1: eyes and the ears that sends and receives those waves
14:57
Speaker 1: and like we said, it can go if you if
14:59
Speaker 1: you see this in a movie, then um, you're likely
15:03
Speaker 1: seeing the kind that they put on your belly because
15:06
Speaker 1: you're far along and they want to see like that
15:09
Speaker 1: little baby in the body parts and everything. Um that
15:13
Speaker 1: is later on in a pregnancy. At first they use
15:15
Speaker 1: the one that goes uh you know, into the vagina
15:19
Speaker 1: with a condom strapped on the end of it, not
15:22
Speaker 1: strap but rolled down. Sure, I mean it makes perfect sense,
15:28
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I mean you gotta put some sort
15:31
Speaker 1: of protective covering over it. And what better than a
15:34
Speaker 1: condom to fit over something that's sort of shaped like
15:37
Speaker 1: a penus. And then they lose that thing up and
15:40
Speaker 1: then up it goes. And then that's how you check
15:43
Speaker 1: on things in the earlier parts of their pregnancy. I
15:45
Speaker 1: would hope that they would have these much smaller, is it? Well,
15:51
Speaker 1: I mean I don't they don't use a magna, they
15:53
Speaker 1: don't need use the magnum, right, but even still a
15:56
Speaker 1: condom fits very loosely too, I should Okay, okay, that's
15:59
Speaker 1: what I was after. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Um, I'm
16:03
Speaker 1: trying to I'm looking around the room that you're not
16:05
Speaker 1: even in to try and compare it to something. But
16:08
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Well, I mean I'm in the
16:12
Speaker 1: we're working from home. No, no, you said you were
16:15
Speaker 1: looking around the room, Yeah, trying to compare it to something,
16:18
Speaker 1: but I'm not there, correct, I'm looking for a like
16:21
Speaker 1: object in the room that you're not even sitting in. Yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: I know, I got what you're saying. I was making
16:26
Speaker 1: a different choke that you're not picking I'm not picking
16:28
Speaker 1: up on it. Let's say it's as big as this,
16:30
Speaker 1: uh highlighter's sort of like a sharpie magic marker. Okay, okay,
16:37
Speaker 1: roughly yeah, alright, So I think we're together on the
16:40
Speaker 1: side of the transducer probe that's used early on, that's
16:43
Speaker 1: inserted man, and they might use that same they might
16:46
Speaker 1: use that same one. What what were you going to say?
16:48
Speaker 1: How did we get through like breastfeeding and female puberty
16:50
Speaker 1: and this one is the one that's tripping us up?
16:52
Speaker 1: So I know I have no idea. Um, I'm going
16:56
Speaker 1: to get us back on track. They'll watch this all right,
16:59
Speaker 1: that same uh wand wand great word for it. Um.
17:05
Speaker 1: It might be used anally orally all sorts of different ways.
17:11
Speaker 1: They might stick it in whatever orifice they can. It's
17:14
Speaker 1: not just vaginally, depending on what they want to get
17:17
Speaker 1: a closer look at is, you know, especially if they're
17:21
Speaker 1: not just looking at a baby. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
17:24
Speaker 1: let's move on. Let's do all right. Up next on
17:28
Speaker 1: the list is the CPU. And that's you know, that's
17:31
Speaker 1: the little computer that does all that that black magic math.
17:35
Speaker 1: Uh and it notes here in the article that contains
17:37
Speaker 1: the electrical power supply. I noticed that too. I thought
17:41
Speaker 1: that was really specific. Um. So yeah, like, if you
17:45
Speaker 1: look at any um, any ultrasound machine, even the most
17:49
Speaker 1: cutting edge ones that they have now look pretty much
17:52
Speaker 1: the same as one you would have seen in like
17:54
Speaker 1: the seventies, they're just a little slimmer. Um, they're a
17:57
Speaker 1: little more user friendly. They'll probably have a touched green
18:00
Speaker 1: I saw that the I think it's the Siemens Sequoya
18:04
Speaker 1: has a gel warmer, which I'm sure is very appreciated
18:08
Speaker 1: by patients. But I mean, for the most part, it's
18:11
Speaker 1: it's just like everything that this article from I don't know,
18:16
Speaker 1: probably two thousand and eight, um yeah, is describing Yeah,
18:21
Speaker 1: you've got your transducer pulse controls, and that's where you
18:25
Speaker 1: can change the frequency, the duration of the pulses, the amplitude,
18:30
Speaker 1: which we'll look. We'll explain what that means in a
18:32
Speaker 1: little while. To the to the tech, they might understand
18:35
Speaker 1: what's going on, but really it's them saying like, um,
18:38
Speaker 1: get clear focus, go deeper, three D mode, that kind
18:41
Speaker 1: of thing. But to the computer, it's like, no, we're
18:44
Speaker 1: we're messing with the amount of electricity that's coming and
18:47
Speaker 1: going through the crystals. Correct, Okay, all right. You got
18:51
Speaker 1: your display that speaks for itself, a little monitor, it
18:55
Speaker 1: says on here keyboard right inputs data. Yeah. I thought
19:01
Speaker 1: that was pretty funny too. The next two are my
19:03
Speaker 1: favorites of this list, though, why don't you go ahead
19:05
Speaker 1: then take it away? I wasn't expecting that was taking
19:08
Speaker 1: a sip of coffee. You've got the disk storage device,
19:13
Speaker 1: which could be anything from a hard drive, floppy disk,
19:17
Speaker 1: or c D yes, and it says that it stores
19:21
Speaker 1: the acquired images. And I actually wrote, I wish you
19:24
Speaker 1: could see this. I wrote, ha ha under that part
19:29
Speaker 1: that it clearly does not have a USB drive. No,
19:32
Speaker 1: clearly not or any kind of SSD driver or anything
19:36
Speaker 1: like that. But then the last one, Chuck, is the printer,
19:38
Speaker 1: which I'm sure still exists, but I'm just guessing that
19:40
Speaker 1: they were in describing a dot matrix printer in this one. No,
19:44
Speaker 1: the printers there, but it's but it's when you know,
19:46
Speaker 1: it's one of those little guys that you just put
19:48
Speaker 1: punch the button and it spits out and then they
19:51
Speaker 1: tear it off. Yes, so I mean, you know they
19:55
Speaker 1: can email you a jpeg, I'm sure, but they're also like,
19:57
Speaker 1: here this goes on your fridge. Here's a butterfly made
20:00
Speaker 1: out of letters get home. Okay. So again that's still
20:10
Speaker 1: basically the components of ultra saw machine. And what I
20:13
Speaker 1: was like, surely, surely this article is just hopelessly out
20:16
Speaker 1: of date, and I mean it really isn't It doesn't.
20:20
Speaker 1: It didn't capture, you know, some of the cutting edge
20:23
Speaker 1: stuff that's being used today. But really, ultra saw machines
20:27
Speaker 1: haven't changed that much in the last like ten twenty,
20:29
Speaker 1: maybe thirty or so years. They've just gotten smaller, more
20:33
Speaker 1: powerful and as um As like computer technology has improved,
20:38
Speaker 1: so too has whatever computer you're gonna find on board
20:40
Speaker 1: and ultraso machine. But the nuts and bolts of it
20:43
Speaker 1: are still generally the same thing and the um the
20:47
Speaker 1: key though. The thing that's really changed over time and
20:49
Speaker 1: gotten better and more sophisticated and varied is that transducer probe.
20:54
Speaker 1: Because initially, yeah, for sure, if you're gonna make any improvements,
20:58
Speaker 1: you want to make it to the transducer because it's
21:00
Speaker 1: going to have some pretty big effects in the keyboard.
21:03
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe so because you do want to input data easily.
21:08
Speaker 1: But with that transducer probe, initially they had to say
21:11
Speaker 1: like one crystal um and that crystal would shoot basically
21:16
Speaker 1: a static beam that was going out into your body
21:19
Speaker 1: and it would basically just take a snapshot of whatever
21:23
Speaker 1: it came in contact with. There might not have been
21:26
Speaker 1: much adjustment to resolution, to depth, to focus anything like that.
21:30
Speaker 1: It was just like, here, what do you expect. It's
21:33
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, Give me a break. You're looking into
21:36
Speaker 1: a human body using sound waves. Just be impressed with that.
21:40
Speaker 1: But then as they started to figure out how to
21:41
Speaker 1: add more and more crystals, into um an array. Yeah. Uh,
21:47
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of different things, and now
21:49
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your output of sound waves can
21:52
Speaker 1: be adjusted crystal by crystal, and your input can be
21:56
Speaker 1: adjusted crystal by crystal as well. So the resolution overall
22:00
Speaker 1: is just magnificently improved since they started making a raise
22:04
Speaker 1: of crystals in these transducer probes. Yeah, and you did
22:07
Speaker 1: a nice little quickie overview of how it worked. But
22:09
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned that it's based on a
22:11
Speaker 1: principle called the piezo electric or pressure electricity effect. Yeah,
22:17
Speaker 1: we didn't. Uh, and that's discovered by a couple of
22:20
Speaker 1: dudes in the eighteen eighties, Pierre and Jacques Curie. Any relation.
22:25
Speaker 1: I meant to look that up. Yeah. I think Pierre
22:28
Speaker 1: is Marie Curi's husband, one of the two are. I'm
22:34
Speaker 1: pretty sure it was Pierre. Yeah, and one of the
22:36
Speaker 1: few times the wife has overshadowed the husband's accomplishments. Yes,
22:40
Speaker 1: but all three of them were extremely accomplished. Yeah. I
22:43
Speaker 1: don't want to knock the Curries. It's kind of tough too.
22:46
Speaker 1: They actually contributed quite a bit. Um, I mean, how
22:51
Speaker 1: much do you want to go over this again? How
22:52
Speaker 1: much more detail do we do we want to throw
22:54
Speaker 1: on people? I mean, I think we basically already explained it.
22:57
Speaker 1: We just left out that it's called the Piazza electric effect,
23:01
Speaker 1: which the Cury's discovered. I mean yeah, but again, ultimately,
23:05
Speaker 1: you squeeze a crystal and then it makes a yelp,
23:07
Speaker 1: and then it listens out and that whatever bounces back
23:10
Speaker 1: gets converted into electricity. It's a it's a it's an
23:13
Speaker 1: inherent property of irregularly shaped crystals. That is just astounding
23:18
Speaker 1: that that actually happens, and maybe even more astounding that
23:22
Speaker 1: humans figured out how to harness it to look inside
23:25
Speaker 1: the body. Yeah, and you know, they're the two most
23:28
Speaker 1: important parts are obviously that in the CPU and the
23:32
Speaker 1: CPU to be able to figure out and this of
23:36
Speaker 1: course just programmed to do so. It's not an emotional
23:39
Speaker 1: living thing that that yet had a fire under its butt, right,
23:44
Speaker 1: But the way that it figures out how to to
23:48
Speaker 1: basically plot these uh, I mean, it's kind of plotting
23:52
Speaker 1: densities is what it's doing at the end of the day,
23:54
Speaker 1: don't you think. Yeah, for sure, based on the echoes
23:57
Speaker 1: that come back in the distance of them, and um, yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: how how energetic the echo is because you know when
24:04
Speaker 1: a when a frequency of sound or a wavelength hits
24:07
Speaker 1: something UM and it's bounced back, it transfers some of
24:10
Speaker 1: its energy. I don't think it's I don't want to
24:14
Speaker 1: say this because we're going to get an email from
24:16
Speaker 1: physics people, so let me just caveat it. With that,
24:19
Speaker 1: I would be very surprised if there's any situation or
24:23
Speaker 1: many situations, especially when you're talking about something is as
24:27
Speaker 1: cluji as the human body UM where you're going to
24:30
Speaker 1: get a dent reflection back, but based on the different
24:35
Speaker 1: kinds of intensities that are received back into that crystal,
24:39
Speaker 1: that those can be measured and you can map like, oh,
24:41
Speaker 1: this is actually a very solid part compared to this
24:44
Speaker 1: this part which now you can see as the edge
24:47
Speaker 1: because it just kind of tapers off. Uh. And the
24:51
Speaker 1: wavelength didn't bounce back quite as strongly because some of
24:54
Speaker 1: it missed or some of it was absorbed. Yeah. And
24:57
Speaker 1: the cool thing about all of this is it's done
24:59
Speaker 1: in real time. It's not like they're doing this and
25:02
Speaker 1: then a couple of days later you get your photo.
25:04
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's all right there. Uh. In the
25:07
Speaker 1: case of a Sonograham and I guess every every use
25:09
Speaker 1: of it, but that's the only one I've experienced personally.
25:12
Speaker 1: It's right there on the monitor and um, you know
25:16
Speaker 1: you you hear the little heart beating too, so it
25:18
Speaker 1: actually um records sound as well. That's net and this
25:22
Speaker 1: article didn't really touch on that. UM. But I that's
25:26
Speaker 1: that's just astounding to me. It's like, um, that's the
25:30
Speaker 1: most like sonar I think, is that. UM. I mean,
25:35
Speaker 1: that's that's where some that's the same echo location is
25:38
Speaker 1: all the basis of this right where you're you're making
25:41
Speaker 1: a sound and then listening back for an echo. But
25:44
Speaker 1: in this case, we we've figured out how to transfer
25:47
Speaker 1: those those sounds that are what comes back into images.
25:50
Speaker 1: But it would make sense that you could also just
25:53
Speaker 1: maintain it as a sound too, right, Yeah, I mean
25:57
Speaker 1: I would think so. I mean that's what a hydrophone is,
26:00
Speaker 1: that it was underwater mics that also just listened to,
26:04
Speaker 1: you know, sound. I'm a little stumped on that one,
26:08
Speaker 1: I have to admit. Or maybe there's a tiny microphone
26:11
Speaker 1: attached maybe so be quiet the microphones list. Uh No,
26:17
Speaker 1: I think that's probably just a part of the programming
26:20
Speaker 1: and maybe perhaps that is the easiest part. Perhaps so,
26:25
Speaker 1: but I really feel like we should just come totally
26:28
Speaker 1: clean and say that it was all educated guests, which
26:32
Speaker 1: you can say is also just making up stuff on
26:34
Speaker 1: the spot. Yeah, yeah, someone someone can correct us and
26:36
Speaker 1: we'll read it out loud. Yeah, we'll read it out loud.
26:39
Speaker 1: We do that kind of thing. So, like we said,
26:41
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the two D variety. UM, they
26:45
Speaker 1: they I guess this was around the mid to early
26:50
Speaker 1: two thousand's because they talk about sort of the new
26:54
Speaker 1: three D imaging UM and it's it's it's been around
26:59
Speaker 1: for a while now, right, it's basically the standards three D,
27:04
Speaker 1: although I think two D is still you know, very
27:07
Speaker 1: much in use to you think two D is the
27:09
Speaker 1: standard or maybe it has to do with how far
27:13
Speaker 1: along as far as sonograms go right, or really what
27:16
Speaker 1: they need to do, but the UM or how what
27:19
Speaker 1: they need to see. I think it probably also depends
27:21
Speaker 1: on that as well. UM. But the so two D
27:25
Speaker 1: is that standard, the one that almost looks like an
27:27
Speaker 1: X ray. It's basically a snapshot. It's kind of grainy. Um,
27:31
Speaker 1: but that's that's what people think of as a standard.
27:34
Speaker 1: Two D. UM sonogram or ultrasound picture. Then then you've
27:40
Speaker 1: got UM three D, which is that comes out as
27:44
Speaker 1: a result of the crystal arrays, right, So you can
27:48
Speaker 1: you can change the frequency of the pulses that are
27:51
Speaker 1: going out so you can sense things further away with
27:54
Speaker 1: the slightly lower frequency ones and sense things closer with
27:58
Speaker 1: the um the higher frequency ones. And the whole thing
28:01
Speaker 1: puts these images together to create a three D picture. Yeah.
28:04
Speaker 1: And like I said, if you've never seen a three
28:07
Speaker 1: D picture, it ain't right from a sonogram. It's it's
28:11
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. It's remarkable that they can get this level
28:13
Speaker 1: of detail. Um. And part of it is surely to
28:19
Speaker 1: delight parents to be. Um, there's no doubt about it.
28:23
Speaker 1: But it's not just for that. It's not like, hey,
28:25
Speaker 1: you want to see an even cooler creepy picture of
28:29
Speaker 1: that developing circus peanut because we can we can do
28:32
Speaker 1: that now. Um. It has a lot of uses. You
28:35
Speaker 1: can there's a lot more detail. You can really assess
28:38
Speaker 1: development of of limbs and the and the face of
28:42
Speaker 1: the of the baby to be, and you can really
28:46
Speaker 1: get in there and kind of see more with your
28:49
Speaker 1: eyeballs what's going on. Well. Plus also I mean, if
28:52
Speaker 1: you're looking for something like a tumor, it's much harder
28:55
Speaker 1: to see a tumor in two dimensions as like black
28:58
Speaker 1: and white shadows, then it is to see like a
29:02
Speaker 1: three dimensional lump. So that's super helpful for three D
29:05
Speaker 1: as well. UM. And then there's there's another mode called
29:10
Speaker 1: M mode or motion mode, which I believe is basically
29:14
Speaker 1: a bunch of two D images that are just taken
29:17
Speaker 1: in such rapid succession that they are basically act like
29:21
Speaker 1: a flip book or a video. So you can see
29:23
Speaker 1: this in in basically real time or just slightly delayed
29:27
Speaker 1: real time, because I know you kind of reference that
29:30
Speaker 1: this is all happening like immediately, but like the pulses
29:35
Speaker 1: that are being sent out and then returning are happening
29:38
Speaker 1: on the order of like millions of a second, over
29:41
Speaker 1: and over and over again. There's there's that kind of
29:44
Speaker 1: old timey single beam that's a constant wavelength UM that's
29:50
Speaker 1: not much in use. The new ones are just very
29:53
Speaker 1: quick pulses that are shot out many many times in
29:57
Speaker 1: a single second UM. And as those things are shot out,
30:02
Speaker 1: the stuff is returning just mind bogglingly quickly to UM.
30:06
Speaker 1: The crystals to be turned into data. Now that's not
30:09
Speaker 1: the Doppler one, is it. No, the Doppler actually uses
30:13
Speaker 1: a steady beam. From what I read, Yeah, so the
30:16
Speaker 1: Doppler ultrasound it's mainly used UM to to find out
30:20
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they can use it for more
30:22
Speaker 1: than one thing, but it seems like the major uses
30:23
Speaker 1: to measure your blood flow rate UM and go to
30:26
Speaker 1: your heart. They can go to your major arteries and
30:29
Speaker 1: they can basically see if you've got any kind of
30:32
Speaker 1: blood flow problems because it's measuring a moving thing going
30:36
Speaker 1: through your body. Yeah, and it actually looks like a
30:39
Speaker 1: weather map where they use Doppler radar. I mean most
30:41
Speaker 1: people see Doppler radar used for things like uh, um,
30:45
Speaker 1: tornado or something like that to show different wind speeds.
30:49
Speaker 1: So like the different flow speeds of the blood flow
30:51
Speaker 1: will be different colors and they can read that and
30:53
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you're your blood flowing nicely, right, you
30:56
Speaker 1: got no problems, right Doppler. So I feel like we
31:01
Speaker 1: should take another break. Huh. Oh my gosh, this is
31:03
Speaker 1: so thrilling that I think we need to to catch
31:06
Speaker 1: our breath. All right, we'll talk about some of the
31:07
Speaker 1: other things. That you can do with a miracle machine.
31:09
Speaker 1: Right after this, you know, Chuck, it really gives me
31:33
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of um comfort, hope, Uh, goodwill, m um,
31:43
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff like that that we've come up
31:46
Speaker 1: in our twelfth year with another name for a machine,
31:51
Speaker 1: like we had Wonder Machine basically from the beginning. I
31:55
Speaker 1: think so and here we are in year twelve and
31:58
Speaker 1: we've just named another machine, that acal machine. So we've
32:02
Speaker 1: talked enough. I think about well, we're gonna talk a
32:05
Speaker 1: little bit more about it, about obstetic obstetric man. I
32:08
Speaker 1: knew I was going to do that obstetrics. And when
32:14
Speaker 1: you go in there, like I said, part of it
32:15
Speaker 1: is to delight parents to be and say, here it is.
32:18
Speaker 1: Everything's going, heartbeat is strong, everything's happening. But they're also
32:22
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of things. They measure the size of
32:25
Speaker 1: the fetus. Um. They use a mouse to sort of
32:28
Speaker 1: click around and measure different distances. Uh, they determine do date. Uh.
32:33
Speaker 1: They want to make sure that fetus is in the
32:34
Speaker 1: right position. Uh. They want to make sure the placenta
32:37
Speaker 1: is in the right position. They want to see how
32:40
Speaker 1: many fetuses there are in there. That's when you get
32:42
Speaker 1: the old By the way, I did not know if
32:44
Speaker 1: you knew this, but there are actually three living things
32:46
Speaker 1: inside of you right now or eight uh so growth rate. Um,
32:53
Speaker 1: you can detect the ectopic pregnant pregnancies this way. It's
32:58
Speaker 1: a very big one. UM. That is when the baby
33:00
Speaker 1: is implanted in the flopian tubes instead of in the uterus,
33:02
Speaker 1: and that means it is not a viable pregnancy, right,
33:05
Speaker 1: so the life threatening for the mom. What else amniotic fluid.
33:09
Speaker 1: You gotta make sure that there's enough cushion around that baby. Yeah,
33:12
Speaker 1: for the pushing, well yeah, actually that's eventually yeah. Uh
33:17
Speaker 1: and then uh if you want to say, go in
33:20
Speaker 1: and take a sample of the amniotic fluid, which you
33:22
Speaker 1: can do a lot of things by um sampling amniotic
33:25
Speaker 1: fluid to test um. So there's a lot of reasons
33:29
Speaker 1: to go in and draw some amniotic fluid. I don't
33:33
Speaker 1: know why I'm trying to convince everybody that that there's
33:36
Speaker 1: reasons to take samples of amniotic fluid. Just trust me,
33:38
Speaker 1: there is. But at the same time, you can sit
33:41
Speaker 1: there and look into the into the womb. The womb
33:45
Speaker 1: is okay, right, I'm not like using some archaic and
33:48
Speaker 1: now offensive term. Am I think? So? Okay, I don't
33:52
Speaker 1: think so either. If I am, please forgive me. I'm
33:54
Speaker 1: genuinely unaware of that. So school me if I'm if
33:58
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, Like, oh, think so anyway, it's called a
34:01
Speaker 1: baby box these days, my friend? Right exactly? Yeah, Um,
34:05
Speaker 1: so if you want to keep an eye on the
34:07
Speaker 1: baby box while you're getting a sample of the amniotic
34:10
Speaker 1: fluid to make sure you're not accidentally poking the baby,
34:13
Speaker 1: that's the ultrasound is really effective for that. Man, Can
34:17
Speaker 1: you believe they used to do that blindly? I was
34:20
Speaker 1: reading an article about using ultrasound to guide um spinal
34:24
Speaker 1: tap insertions, and this article said that that the authors
34:30
Speaker 1: believed that even though that you can use ultrasound for this,
34:34
Speaker 1: now that the technology is widely available, most neurosurgeons prefer
34:39
Speaker 1: to just go in blind because it's more thrilling. Seriously,
34:43
Speaker 1: this was an academic journal article that I was reading,
34:46
Speaker 1: and they just said it. So they crack open some
34:51
Speaker 1: snippett and then go in there, Yeah, wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Uh,
34:58
Speaker 1: what else can you do? You can use the for cardiology,
35:00
Speaker 1: we talked about the blood flow but you can also
35:04
Speaker 1: literally say, hey, is there something going on inside of
35:07
Speaker 1: your heart, let's go look yep. Um, and especially with
35:11
Speaker 1: three D and real time stuff like you like, it's
35:14
Speaker 1: it's one thing to say, okay, well the shape of
35:16
Speaker 1: your heart looks pretty good, or the flow of your
35:19
Speaker 1: blood looks pretty good. But thanks to that M mode,
35:21
Speaker 1: so you can see it in motion, you can actually
35:24
Speaker 1: see make sure that the valves are opening and closing
35:27
Speaker 1: correctly in the right the right time. Like it's basically
35:30
Speaker 1: just peeking in real time onto the operations of your
35:33
Speaker 1: of your body using M mode. It's pretty pretty amazing stuff.
35:36
Speaker 1: It's amazing. We also said, of course you can see
35:39
Speaker 1: kidney stones, which, by the way, I think we should
35:41
Speaker 1: do an episode on kidney stones eventually. Have you ever
35:44
Speaker 1: had one? I don't want to say, because I don't
35:47
Speaker 1: want to jinx myself. Okay, so you haven't, but you
35:49
Speaker 1: fear it. Yes, that's it's a way to put it from. Yeah,
35:53
Speaker 1: I've never had a kidney stone either um or gall stones.
35:57
Speaker 1: I've never had any stones inside me. I've heard that
36:00
Speaker 1: getting those out is quite the ride. Yes, um, you
36:04
Speaker 1: can also measure blood flow through the kidneys to you
36:07
Speaker 1: can detect prostate cancer. You can see lumps on the prostate. UM,
36:11
Speaker 1: that's one of those instances where they will be using
36:13
Speaker 1: the wand UM. Yeah. So I also said earlier on
36:18
Speaker 1: Chuck that, um, they're getting smaller and higher resolution and
36:24
Speaker 1: more portable and one of the places that ultrasound machines
36:27
Speaker 1: are showing to pop up more and more. And I
36:29
Speaker 1: think now it's probably just a matter of course based
36:31
Speaker 1: on how old this article is, but in emergency rooms
36:35
Speaker 1: they're starting to really become kind of par for the course.
36:38
Speaker 1: So like if somebody shows up and says, like, you know,
36:41
Speaker 1: they're doubled over in abdominal pain, rather than sending them
36:45
Speaker 1: to surgery or um even up to radiology, they will
36:49
Speaker 1: they will just apply in ultrasound there and be like, oh, yeah,
36:53
Speaker 1: you've got to ruptured stomach, so we need to we
36:58
Speaker 1: need to get we need to get that. They say,
37:01
Speaker 1: Now I wish I would have rushed you into surgery.
37:03
Speaker 1: I need a second opinion. Uh yeah, ultrasounds are safe.
37:08
Speaker 1: Um there. You know, there have been questions because anytime
37:11
Speaker 1: you're applying heat and energy near organs, like very close
37:16
Speaker 1: to organs, sometimes you've got to really kind of consider this,
37:20
Speaker 1: and there have been some reports here and there of
37:22
Speaker 1: low birth weight babies if you have had frequent ultrasounds
37:26
Speaker 1: during your pregnancy. But um, they have basically come out
37:31
Speaker 1: and say ultrasounds are safe. But sort of like an
37:34
Speaker 1: X ray, you don't want to come in here every
37:36
Speaker 1: other day and get one. You want to only do
37:39
Speaker 1: it when when it's necessary because there is heat. Uh,
37:42
Speaker 1: and apparently the formation of bubbles because of this heat
37:45
Speaker 1: when dissolved gases come out of that solution. Um, you
37:50
Speaker 1: know that's a thing. But that they are safe, yeah,
37:53
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been using it for sixty seventy years now,
37:57
Speaker 1: and there's been plenty of chance for if that's an issue,
38:00
Speaker 1: for it to become obvious and evident with I mean,
38:03
Speaker 1: it's it just seems like it's very safe. I did
38:06
Speaker 1: see that there. This article says that there's not been
38:09
Speaker 1: any documented studies that show harm in animals, and that's
38:12
Speaker 1: that's not true. Actually, there are animal studies that have
38:17
Speaker 1: shown that exposure to some kinds of ultrasound, typically continuous wave,
38:23
Speaker 1: which is just a concentrated beam of energy, that that
38:28
Speaker 1: can actually cause um thermal heating, which is not good. UM.
38:33
Speaker 1: And then there. I found another study from two thousand
38:35
Speaker 1: seventeen that said some kinds, especially continuous wave, but also
38:41
Speaker 1: super um super quickly pulsed ultrasound has shown that it
38:47
Speaker 1: can break up DNA strands. Interesting, which is weird because
38:52
Speaker 1: like that's one of the things that people have always
38:53
Speaker 1: pointed to is well, this is just mechanical energy. It's
38:56
Speaker 1: not going to damage your DNA like ionizing radiation. Is
39:00
Speaker 1: pretty it's a pretty startling revelation. And they actually said
39:03
Speaker 1: in the article, you know again, it was an academic
39:06
Speaker 1: journal article. I can't remember which one, UM, but it
39:09
Speaker 1: said like this is going to be of um like
39:12
Speaker 1: a lot of interest to a bunch of different fields
39:14
Speaker 1: because we didn't know this before. Yeah, that is interesting.
39:18
Speaker 1: Is it time to read the Franz Kafka Guide to
39:22
Speaker 1: getting a ultrasound? Yes? I also want to say chuck
39:26
Speaker 1: before we do, though, um the there again, there's basically
39:32
Speaker 1: no evidence that there is harm that comes from ultrasound
39:37
Speaker 1: exams in obstet and obstetrics UM, especially when it's done
39:42
Speaker 1: by a trained person. Oh sure, Yeah, it doesn't sound
39:47
Speaker 1: like it's anything to be worried about. Overall, I didn't
39:50
Speaker 1: want to scare anybody unnecessarily. You shouldn't or people should
39:53
Speaker 1: not be alright, and you shouldn't both. Yeah, alright, So
39:58
Speaker 1: Franz Kafkas guy to getting an a or sound. Number one. Man,
40:04
Speaker 1: if we could get Verner Hurtsog to read this list,
40:06
Speaker 1: that would just be amazing. We've got a pretty good
40:08
Speaker 1: uh runner up in the room. Nol does a great job.
40:11
Speaker 1: I should we should get Nolan here. We can double
40:14
Speaker 1: them in. Uh. Number one is to remove your clothes, okay.
40:19
Speaker 1: Number two is the ultra sonographer drapes the cloth over
40:23
Speaker 1: any exposed areas that are not needed for the exam. Right, okay,
40:29
Speaker 1: check number three. Uh, we should really get PAULA Thompkins
40:34
Speaker 1: if we want to do this right. Actually, why what
40:37
Speaker 1: would he do? Well? He does a great Verner Hertzog.
40:41
Speaker 1: We should just get Verner hurt Zog. Yeah, man, he's
40:44
Speaker 1: down for whatever. It seems like? What stuff? Should I know? Uh?
40:51
Speaker 1: The ultrasonographer applies a mineral oil based jelly to your skin,
40:57
Speaker 1: doesn't say this or to the condom on the robe.
41:01
Speaker 1: The jelly eliminates air between the probe and your skin
41:03
Speaker 1: to help pass the sound waves into your body. Yeah,
41:05
Speaker 1: and if You're lucky. They're using a Siemens Sequoia brand
41:09
Speaker 1: ultrasound machine, which has an onboard gel heater. That's right.
41:14
Speaker 1: Are they giving you money? No, okay, I want some
41:17
Speaker 1: of that Semens money. Hey man, they got there loaded.
41:22
Speaker 1: They're one of those companies that kind of make everything right. Yeah. Yeah.
41:26
Speaker 1: What if they did hear this and reached out to
41:28
Speaker 1: us and we're like, hey, we really appreciate it. We're
41:31
Speaker 1: sending you guys each an ultrasound machine. Hey man, I
41:34
Speaker 1: got it, can go with my I've got a Siemens brand.
41:37
Speaker 1: Uh car charger, electric car charger, you go. I'll bet
41:42
Speaker 1: that's something that was left off this list. You can
41:44
Speaker 1: charge a car with a decent ultrasound or at the
41:48
Speaker 1: very least jump one off. It's it's got jumper. Uh.
41:53
Speaker 1: The ultrasonographer covers the probe with a plastic cover. That's
41:57
Speaker 1: the condom. Uh he slash she and I'm gonna add
42:01
Speaker 1: slash day pass the probe over your skin to obtain
42:05
Speaker 1: the required images. Depending on the type of exam, the
42:07
Speaker 1: probe maybe inserted into you. You want to finish up
42:12
Speaker 1: here with the last few Oh no, you're doing great,
42:14
Speaker 1: all right? Number six. You may be asked to change position,
42:17
Speaker 1: change positions to get a better looks at the area
42:20
Speaker 1: of interest. Okay, here here, here's two thousand and eight
42:24
Speaker 1: popping up again. Number seven. After the images have been
42:27
Speaker 1: acquired and measurements taken, the data is stored on a disk.
42:31
Speaker 1: You may get a hard copy of the images. They
42:35
Speaker 1: may write and sharpie what it is on the disk
42:38
Speaker 1: even and then yeah, this is where it starts to
42:42
Speaker 1: take a kind of a dark turn. Number eight you're
42:45
Speaker 1: given a towelet to clean up. And number nine, I
42:51
Speaker 1: can't believe he's actually on the list. You get dressed.
42:57
Speaker 1: It's just like the grimmest list of procedures you've ever
43:01
Speaker 1: heard of. And they stop at nine. Number ten should
43:03
Speaker 1: have been. Then you go give them your credit card
43:05
Speaker 1: and pay your co pay. Number eleven. You walk out
43:08
Speaker 1: to the parking to the parking lot. Number twelve, walk
43:12
Speaker 1: back in because you forgot to get validated. Number thirteen.
43:15
Speaker 1: Check your back seat and make sure there are no
43:17
Speaker 1: creeps there, right. Number fourteen removed the creep that you found. Wow,
43:22
Speaker 1: the last so um, we're talking about the future of
43:26
Speaker 1: ultrasound and this this, uh, this article isn't really captured.
43:30
Speaker 1: So I started to look around. I found, weirdly enough,
43:32
Speaker 1: a list of cutting edge ultrasound stuff on the in
43:36
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail of all places and UM. The list
43:40
Speaker 1: is actually terrible because it was Daily Mail article. But
43:42
Speaker 1: one thing that they did talk about was tractor beams
43:45
Speaker 1: that they figured out that you can actually lift UM
43:48
Speaker 1: something as small as a beat. At this point using
43:51
Speaker 1: sound waves. You would think kind of like Star Wars,
43:55
Speaker 1: but no, not at all. It's actually levitating more than
43:59
Speaker 1: a tractor beam. Actor beam makes it sound like you're
44:01
Speaker 1: pulling something upward towards you. This is actually raising it
44:04
Speaker 1: up away from you. But there are all sorts of
44:06
Speaker 1: applications for this, especially in water, because you can use
44:10
Speaker 1: these sounds in the different arrays UM and the different
44:13
Speaker 1: configurations of a race to move something left or right.
44:16
Speaker 1: It's called steering the beam, and they actually use it
44:19
Speaker 1: for UM for ultrasound imaging too. But you can actually
44:22
Speaker 1: move things like say an oil slick. You could kind
44:25
Speaker 1: of basically drive it into shore, away from shore to
44:29
Speaker 1: some other place where you want to capture. Actually pretty
44:32
Speaker 1: cool applications for it. UM. In medicine, they've figured out
44:36
Speaker 1: that if you give somebody a drug, say, like a
44:40
Speaker 1: chemotherapy drug. Um, some of those chemotherapy drugs only partially
44:44
Speaker 1: cross the blood brain barrier, so they're only partially effective.
44:48
Speaker 1: The rest just gets metabolized and and you pee it
44:50
Speaker 1: out or whatever. So they figured out that if you
44:53
Speaker 1: give somebody a chemotherapy drug and then blast their brain
44:58
Speaker 1: with an ultrasound machine, seen, it will push the drugs
45:02
Speaker 1: past the blood brain barrier into your brain and they'll
45:06
Speaker 1: they'll be that much more effective. I thought that was
45:10
Speaker 1: pretty cool too. There was a man who was um
45:12
Speaker 1: awakened from a coma because the doctor, for some reason
45:16
Speaker 1: blast is hypothalamus with a continuous wave beam of ultrasound.
45:21
Speaker 1: But even the doctor was like, this may have been coincidence,
45:23
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't know, man. It seems like
45:26
Speaker 1: they're all sorts of applications that are just starting to
45:30
Speaker 1: tap into. Yeah, I've got a couple more. Let's hear them.
45:34
Speaker 1: Ultrasound assisted lipa suction basically burning up fat cells. Yes,
45:42
Speaker 1: but that really kind of points out that, yeah, this
45:45
Speaker 1: actually can create heat, because that's what they're doing is
45:47
Speaker 1: melting fat cells using sound, which is the thing. But
45:51
Speaker 1: then they've also figured out that depending on the frequency
45:53
Speaker 1: of the sound um of the sound wave. It can
45:57
Speaker 1: actually stimulate grow can function in cells. So they found
46:02
Speaker 1: that like persistent wounds like ulcers and things like that,
46:05
Speaker 1: you can actually stimulate them to heal by hitting them
46:08
Speaker 1: with sound waves. Yeah, I love it. Is there anything
46:13
Speaker 1: an ultrasound machine can't do, Chuck, I don't know. I
46:17
Speaker 1: do know, and I'll tell you what the answer that is.
46:19
Speaker 1: And it's no. You got anything else? I got nothing
46:23
Speaker 1: else but a listener mail. Okay, Well that's it for
46:26
Speaker 1: ultrasounds forty seven minutes. That's impressive. Uh. Since I said
46:31
Speaker 1: it's impressive, it's time for listener mail. Hi guys, I
46:37
Speaker 1: am an eleven year old boy from the West Coast.
46:40
Speaker 1: My parents introduced me to your podcast a few years ago,
46:42
Speaker 1: and I became interested in podcast and podcasting because of you.
46:47
Speaker 1: I've recently started my own podcast called A Child's Perspective
46:51
Speaker 1: of Current Events Nights. It sounds wonderful, it does. I'm
46:56
Speaker 1: gonna check it out. I haven't had a chance to
46:58
Speaker 1: listen yet, Dagan, but you said I would love it
47:00
Speaker 1: if you had mentioned my podcast during your listener mail section.
47:03
Speaker 1: It would really help boost my audience. H Slash monthly listeners.
47:07
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time. I really hope you will
47:09
Speaker 1: consider mentioning me on your podcast. And that is from
47:12
Speaker 1: Dagon Hofeld and again it's called A Child's Perspective of
47:17
Speaker 1: Current Events. I love that straightforward name. It's like stuff
47:20
Speaker 1: you should know. It says it all. It definitely is
47:22
Speaker 1: in the same wheelhouse for sure. Yeah, but it's not
47:25
Speaker 1: derivative in any way. No, no, no, not like it.
47:27
Speaker 1: It's it's just in it's perfect simplicity. Yeah, I love it,
47:30
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna give that a listen this afternoon, Dagan
47:33
Speaker 1: and see how you're doing. And if you need any
47:35
Speaker 1: other advice just let us know. But so far, the
47:37
Speaker 1: you've done the smartest thing, which was to get someone
47:41
Speaker 1: on a super popular podcast to talk about your podcast.
47:44
Speaker 1: That stuff one it helps. Hopefully you'll get an s
47:47
Speaker 1: y s K bump out of this. And I'm gonna
47:49
Speaker 1: go listen to Dagan. So thanks for letting us now, right, yeah, right,
47:54
Speaker 1: If you want to go check out Dagan's podcast, go
47:58
Speaker 1: do that. It's called A child Perspective on Current Events.
48:01
Speaker 1: It's so great. And in the meantime, if you want
48:04
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, you can send us
48:05
Speaker 1: an email like Dagan did, wrap it up spanking on
48:08
Speaker 1: the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
48:11
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
48:16
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts
48:19
Speaker 1: for my heart radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
48:21
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.