Hepatic sonography: technical considerations, present applications, and possible future.
Hepatic sonography is improved when static B scanning is combined with a real-time examination, eliminating possible "blind spots" and "pseudolesions." At present, sonography is used to augment radionuclide scanning, to detect masses, and for follow-up. Because of its versatility, sonography should replace radionuclide liver scanning as the initial diagnostic procedure in patients with liver neoplasms. However, if sonography is to retain its utility in the future when compared with computed tomography, significant improvements in equipment are needed. Two other areas in which developments might be made are: (a) data representation other than echo-amplitude, and (b) the availability of liver-specific contrast agents.
D006801:Humans; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D014159:Transducers; D014465:Ultrasonics / Q000295:instrumentation; D014463:Ultrasonography