When B Mode has an Image Problem

Ever heard this from a patient? 'Wouldn't it be great if it was in colour.' It's true; B mode lacks the glamour of Doppler. We're guilty of it ourselves, we love Doppler. How frequently do we hear 'did you put colour on that'? When was the last time you asked 'how much temporal smoothing did you use'? And yet every time I watch others scan I witness Sonographers scanning from various angles, patient positions, and acoustic windows and with varying transducer pressure. Adjustments are made with imaging controls, images labelled, arrowed and zoomed. There's a lot going on to produce these underappreciated grey dots. It's not until you try to explain to someone the reasons why you just did all that before pushing the print button that you notice it yourself. B mode may lack glamour but for most of us it's what we do.