- Image via Wikipedia
Sound waves are an incredible thing. For one thing, they can be used to tell the police when someone is speeding (which might not be convenient if you happen to be the speeder, but it is nonetheless impressive), diagnose just about any kind of illness a person might have, and even take care of malignant growths inside of an internal organ. These are the kinds of things that one would simply never suspect that the humble sound wave might be capable of doing. For the most part, we typically just assume that sound waves let us hear things, and leave it at that rather cursory level of accomplishment. But sound waves can do a whole lot more than just identify the basic goings on in the outside world.
Ultrasound technology has been in existence for decades, but seems to grow more effective with each passing year. With an ultrasound device known as Doppler ultrasound, these extremely high frequency sound waves can pick up what is going on inside of your body at the very moment that it is happening. Rather like a cop with a radar gun, this fantastic piece of equipment can tell a trained physician or technician how quickly blood is moving through your system. This information can be in three dimensions, show the actual movement of the blood (and the organs that move the blood around), and whether anything suspicious or potentially dangerous exists (such as a blockage, blood vessel narrowing or malformed object like a tumor or congenital defect).
Sound waves can even allow a previously barbaric process of removing malignant (cancerous) cells from the walls of a man’s prostate to be elevated into the modern age. If you are a man whose prostate is under threat, the notion of your own cells threatening your masculine power is scary enough – but the idea of a doctor shoving a metal tool in there and scraping off those cells could be a nightmare. A better method actually uses extremely high frequency sound waves to essentially liquify (or cavitate) the cells into getting out of there. Yay sound.
