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Tips for understanding a 4D pregnancy ultrasound

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An ultrasound comes from machines that help create images of the womb in your body. With the help of an ultrasound, your doctor can tell many things about your child like its size, how well the baby’s heart and organs of the body are growing and working, and even give the expected date of delivery.

Though 2D and 3D ultrasounds have been around for some time, 4D is a relatively new technology in ultrasound. 4D is four dimensional, and in 4D ultrasound, this fourth dimension is what helps create live pictures of your unborn baby.

Difference between the different ultrasounds

The major difference between 4D ultrasound and other scans is that it provides live studies of the baby. This gives a great bonding experience with the baby and mother to make her work at taking better care of herself. Siblings and other family members also draw closer together with a 4D pregnancy ultrasound.

3D and 2D ultrasounds use the same machine where 2D shows the baby in layers and 3D, looks at the baby’s surface. However with 4D, motion is added to the images to make the images livelier. This is why 4D is also referred to as 3D live images.

2D ultrasound is used as a diagnostic tool till 20 weeks of pregnancy. 3D shows the outside of the baby and is used for diagnosing some conditions like cleft lip, which is not picked up by 2D images.

Preferable period for a 4D pregnancy scan

4D pregnancy ultrasound is used from 24 to 34 weeks. This is because before the 24th week, the baby is not that developed enough for the 4D to be beneficial as a scan. It is from the 27th to 34th week that the baby develops some fat to resemble an infant that moves around the stomach.

As there is sufficient room in the stomach for the baby to move around, 4D images look great. However after the 34th week, as the baby grows, there is insufficient space for the baby to move around. This is why the images now are not that impressive.

This shows that there should be sufficient room in the stomach for a 4D scan. Besides this, to get great images in a 4D scan, there should be sufficient amniotic fluid to let sound waves travel through the fluid to create clearer images.

Full figured women give better images

Full figured women get better images than a smaller framed woman as there is more space for the sound waves to travel through. Last, but not least, the quality of images of the scan depends on the expertise of the technician and the quality of the equipment being used.

However you have no control in the location of the placenta; if it blocks your baby’s face, the sound waves will not be able to penetrate the placenta. Similarly, if the baby’s position is such that the face gets blocked by the sine, you will get pictures only of the baby’s back of the head.

Author Martin Paul is a freelance writer for Houston Prenatal Ultrasound a leading 4D and 3D Ultrasound scanning center in Houston.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/women’s-health-articles/tips-for-understanding-a-4d-pregnancy-ultrasound-1039869.html

One Response to “Tips for understanding a 4D pregnancy ultrasound”

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