What is an ultrasound test?
Ultrasound is a test that doesn’t use radiation. Instead, it uses a high-frequency sound wave to create a picture of the inside of the breast. A gel is put on the breast to make it slippery and to make sure that air doesn’t interfere with the sound waves passing to and from the tissue being examined, and a small device (a transducer) is slid along the skin to send sound waves to the imaging machine to create a picture. (If you had a sonogram while you were pregnant, your doctor was sending sound waves to your uterus to get a picture of the baby.) If the doctor feels a lump and the mammogram shows dense breast tissue, the ultrasound may be able to find the lump within the dense breast tissue. Ultrasound also is a good tool for getting more information about the characteristics of a lump, such as whether it is a fluid-filled cyst or solid. Before ultrasound, physicians used to diagnose the characteristics of a palpable mass by sticking a needle in it to see whether it contained fluid. Th
