The technique which is also know as color ultrasound colloquially is not a method only used for pregnancy monitoring. It is a method used for monitoring various diseases in both women and men besides pregnancy. Color doppler examination draws blood flow direction and speed in blood vessels on a screen by red-blue colors.
The most examined blood vessels with color doppler ultrasound are the blood vessels in the navel cord of a baby (umbilical blood vessels). Other than that various blood vessels such as uterus blood vessels, brain blood vessels, cardiac blood vessels can also be examined. It is especially performed in babies with suspicion of growth deficiency in uterus, in case of anomalies, cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac anomaly and in patients with high blood pressure. It is not a routine examination performed in every pregnancy.
With 4 dimensional (4D) Ultrasound devices it is possible to determine the gender of a baby at a very early stage and early diagnose cleft palate, cleft lip, missing finger and diseases caused by brain and spinal cord.
The "mongolism" (Down`s syndrome), determined by thickness of back of the neck, can be scanned at 3rd month due to the 4D ultrasound. Therefore four dimensional ultrasounds are preferred over conventional 2 dimensional (2D) ultrasounds.
Also, with four dimensional ultrasound, development of twins, triplets, eagerly anticipated by their parents with a particular joy and excitement, may be monitored more clearly.
4D ultrasounds enable parents, excited to have babies, to find out the sex and get color photos of their babies as they have both color doppler and 3rd dimension features combined besides their conventional feature to examine in two dimensions.