I just had a Echo cardiogram done today and as I was watching my heart beat, I started to wonder how the machine manages to get the image of my heart. I also wondered how does the imaging not get interrupted by the bone in front of it?
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Are you referring to an echo, or just the EKG? Because they work differently. Electrocardiograms just detect the electric pulses that trigger your heart beat. The only thing the stickers are providing is the line readout. The image of the heart comes from the wand, which uses sonar. The reason the rib cage doesn’t stop it is because it’s actually kind of does. That’s why they have to push into you to go between them. And it’s also not using sound to draw the heart like real sonar does. Rather it listened to the heart and maps it based on where the sound comes from. Basically a more sensitive stethoscope.
The heart generates it’s own electrical current and typically in a known direction (vector). The leads are (+) and (-) and are used to detect the direction of that current. Think of your heart like a car. You can get a good look at her by standing in front, on each side, behind, etc. This is what the leads do-get different perspectives on the front and lateral, a little of the “bottom” sides of your heart.
The squiggles are electrical currents that are timed with known mechanical events (atrial contraction, ventricular contraction, ventricular rest). It’s a quick and dirty way to find out if something is wrong based on either how far off one or more squiggles is, or how different this EKG is from your last one.
An echo on the other hand uses vibrating crystals to emit high frequency pulses through your tissues. Each tissue type (bone, muscle, ligament, air) will absorb and reflect the pulses at different speeds and amounts. The picture you see is the computer recreation of all those rejections. White objects are harder, black is air. It looks at the actual mechanical functioning of your heart as well as valves and blood flow. Together, you can find out a whole lot
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