Still not convinced?

Further aspects:

•     Standardized imaging protocols and storage of all exam information are routine in virtually all imaging modalities except general ultrasound (US).

•     For technical reasons, clinicians and radiologists of the past have been limited to the examiners bedside perception of pathology, still images based on this perception, and written reports.

•     For reasons of traditions, US is still performed the same way almost everywhere despite the technical developments in recent years.

•     It is well known that the lack of strict exam standardization and selective still imaging - regardless of the amount of still images per exam - is a severe obstacle to dependable re-evaluation of exams.

•     Without complete standardized cine documentation, comparison with previous exams is in effect restricted to comparison with the previous reports!

•     Nobody would dream of scrolling through CT exams at the monitor at the CT lab, saving a few slices, erasing the rest and then writing a report. But this is exactly what is done in the US departments.

•     Our experience since 1999, when we began developing Sonodynamics, has proven to us that all US examiners occasionally overlook important information that is conspicuous on the machine's monitor - information that can be preserved and discovered by the use of a strict and regular cine documentation technique.

•     Contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) really pinpoints the shortcomings above by introducing a new aspect: The time factor.

•     In addition to the large amount of information that actually is in conventional US, CEUS also provides information that rapidly changes with the circulatory phases of the target organ.

•     With CEUS it becomes evident that US documentation needs to be taken to a more dependable level than that of still images and paper reports alone, for the full utility of this marvellous modality!