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Echocardiography uses ultrasonography to form moving images of the heart. Returning sound waves reveal the dimensions and motion of its chambers and heart valves, making structure and pumping visible during the same examination.

In the common transthoracic approach, an acoustic transducer transmits pulses through the chest and receives reflected signals. A computer reconstructs their spatial and temporal pattern into images. The resulting measurements contribute to clinical diagnosis alongside the clinical history and other observations; an image and its interpretation are distinct stages of the assessment.^[ref]