ABSTRACT
Why a chapter on technology? After all ‘Ultrasound scanners are easy to use. You turn them on, put gel on the patient, put the probe on the patient and, hey presto, you have a picture.’ But then it gets a bit trickier. Sometimes there are unaccountable things in the image or else stuff, that you jolly well know is in the breast somewhere, is invisible. That is where this chapter is designed to help. In an entirely non-mathematical way it describes the very basic functions of the scanner, how ultrasound interacts with tissues to make images and how the operator can adjust the machine’s controls to give the most useful image, or to retrieve the situation when the image looks completely hopeless.
