For the second installment of our ‘Ask the Experts’ series, we speak to Yvette Lovis DCR, BSc Diagnostic Radiography Pgdip Medical Ultrasound, a clinical specialist sonographer and highly knowledgeable on all things ultrasound-related. Yvette’s veterinary ultrasound career can said to have started through her love of dogs, with Yvette boarding guide dogs for the previous 8 years, which involves providing our canine friends with food and accommodation in the last 3 months of training. Consequently, when Yvette was asked by a work colleague to teach some dog breeders a particular course, she felt that it was “too good an opportunity to miss” – after all, what could be more satisfying than working with dogs in a field she greatly enjoyed?

It is of no great surprise therefore that Yvette’s favourite animal to scan is a dog! However, the breeds that she favours for scanning are a working Cocker Spaniels and Bull Dogs although she finds skinny dogs with longer bodies more difficult to scan. The ‘cine loop’ feature is also favoured by Yvette, which can come in very useful for those dogs (or foetuses) that just can’t remain still.

So what advice can Yvette offer to anyone wanting to follow a similar career path? She explains that if you are a sonographer with a passion for dogs/working with dogs and teaching others your skills, finding an amenable and approachable ultrasound imaging company is a good way to start. This should allow you to gain valuable experience whilst simultaneously enabling you to develop your ultrasound knowledge and expertise.

For those just starting out on their veterinary ultrasound career, Yvette would recommend a MSU Dog Scan Portable Ultrasound machine, although she also says that it would be even better if the scanner could be prevented from beeping! The MSU scanner is very reasonably priced and the ability to work between frequencies of 2.5-3.5MHz ensures that the practitioner will have no problems scanning dog breeds irrespective of size. This ultrasound scanner is also ideal for pregnancy work, with the sacs and foetal structures easily distinguishable.  

Finally, moving away from canine ultrasound, Yvette tells us that her most rewarding ultrasound scanning experience was on a woman who was suspected to be pregnant, despite persistently presenting with an empty uterus and a lack of features associated with ectopic pregnancy. Due to ultrasound scanning, Yvette was able to identify swollen lymph nodes which were key in the eventual discovery of an hCG-producing (hormone chorionic gonadotrophin, a hormone whose presence is used by pregnancy tests to indicate a positive pregnancy) tumour. In this instance, the importance of ultrasound imaging is clear to see.