ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that ultrasound technology and images are always already hybrid carrying both medical and social meanings and that sonograms have had and continue to have multiple meanings and contested interpretations in clinical care. The origins of ultrasonography are to be found not in medicine but in engineering. Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) was developed to measure distance underwater. Four-dimensional ultrasound entails creating a moving image by continuously constructing 3d images one after another. The technology allows a huge quantity of data to be recorded quickly and subjected to review and manipulation as needed, often long after the patient has left the examination room. Women engage with ultrasound technology for their own reasons alongside, or in opposition to, the medically defined purpose of ultrasound. It is also impossible to include the full gamut of clinical applications for ultrasound even within the single discipline of obstetrics. Interested readers follow the citations for much more technical and medical detail.
