Ultrasound is a wonderful tool in reproductive medicine and it doesn’t have any harmful effects on women. The first and foremost thing is to understand that it is a safe test that does not carry any risk for your health. It can be done any number of times without harm. The 2nd thing is, Ultrasound is done to what is assess the female reproductive tract. It can be imaged in two dimensions, three dimensions, and four dimensions. What information we get is 1) the size of the Uterus. 2) the thickness of the lining.3) whether there are any abnormalities in the uterus since birth or congenital anomalies of the uterus. The 4th aspect is, are there any tumors growing in the uterus, like fibroid or adenomyosis.
The fifth is, to see if the bed where the baby grows is normal or abnormal. These are the details about the uterus obtained by ultrasound. Adjacent to the uterus, two ovaries are vital for the female reproductive tract. In the ovaries, we see whether the ovary size is appropriate for your age. The reason why we see the size is, women are born with a fixed number of eggs, and these eggs start growing and developing from the time you have first menses period and when they are getting exhausted at the age of 40 to 50 years, then it is called menopause. Ultrasound helps us to see the size of the ovary, whether it is normal or abnormal. If it is abnormal, what type of abnormality? The other aspect is if the Ovary contains any cyst or tumors.
A lot of times a woman is diagnosed with polycystic ovary, and then somebody says, PCO or cysts in the ovary. But a lot of times a mistaken diagnosis is made. A polycystic ovary should contain three parameters. One is the women should have irregular cycles, the ovary size should be significantly larger, and third is the number of cysts or follicles should be at least 15 to 20 per each ovary, then only we say it is a polycystic ovary Plus the women should have signs of androgen excess like acne or excessive hair. Just because by ultrasound the ovaries are larger it doesn’t mean polycystic ovary. So we rule out the presence or absence of polycystic ovary, then we rule out whether the woman’s ovaries are appropriate to their age or they are decreased in size. If there is a decrease in size, is an urgency to plan pregnancy early, or if they should not postpone pregnancy.
The other thing is the presence of a cyst, when it is a functional cyst, it does not harm the reproductive tract and can be left alone. Sometimes the presence of a cyst called endometriosis might need surgery. Sometimes it might need assisted reproduction also known as IVF.
This is information about the uterus. We also get information about the ovary concerning their function and abnormalities. By using 3D technology at the Krishna IVF clinic I will be able to look at the uterus and the ovary, in 3 dimensions, so I get much better information and in 4 dimensions I get further clarity about the individual pathology. Here I want to add one thing Krishna IVF is working with Samsung for the past 5 years and developed certain technologies using Artificial intelligence. One of the development that has happened at Krishna IVF is the launch of a product in the Samsung Ultrasound as 5D Follicle and on that topic, we had a scientific publication also and Samsung had also got the patent. In the area of Uterus using Artificial intelligence, we also worked with Samsung for a future application called junctional zone which will be coming in 2023 or 2024 machines, where we are trying to assess the lining throughout the cycle and use it as a predictor for treatment success also.
So in short we do an ultrasound to know the health of the uterus and health of the ovary and if its abnormalities picked up in the first visit, within a couple of hours of 1st visit, we have a huge lot of information.