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BIR Bulletin

Ask searching questions about the safety of diagnostic ultrasound and you will come up with some odd conundrums. Even though, after the plain radiograph, ultrasound is now much the most common form of imaging examination, no-one has found reproducible evidence of even minor harm to patients, and yet some scanners emit ultrasound pulses with amplitudes in the range used in commercial lithotripters, others have beam intensities in the range used (with apparent effect) in physiotherapy, and yet others have been found with transducer surface temperatures up to 80°C.