Most people associate ultrasound cameras with looking at the baby to determine the gender. However an ultrasound camera is also an excellent tool for both diagnosing musculoskeletal disorders and precise needle placement for prolotherapy. Musculoskeletal ultrasound is widely used in Europe and Australia and is gaining popularity in the US.

MRI and CAT scans are conventionally thought of as the gold standard for diagnosing such conditions as torn rotator cuff, nerve entrapment, carpal tunnel syndrome, torn ligaments, and other such musculoskeletal conditions. The major disadvantages of these techniques are that they are very expensive, they are unappealing to those people who tend toward claustrophobia, and they do not show degeneration or laxity of soft tissues. Ultrasound, on the other hand, is done in the office within minutes and is relatively inexpensive. The exact location of degeneration of tissues (such as in tennis elbow and Achilles tendonitis) can be pinpointed. This allows for precise treatment. Because it is a motion camera, structures are viewed in real time. This gives the huge advantage of being able to view structures in real time. This is particularly valuable when evaluating impingement syndromes, snapping syndromes, laxity of ligaments causing instability of joints, and muscle and tendon tears that only show up with certain movements.

Another huge advantage of ultrasound is its use for guidance of prolotherapy injections. You can see the structure you want to treat, and you can see the needle tip touch that exact point, and then you can see the fluid infiltrate that structure. This is of particular value when injecting platelet rich plasma seeing as how PRP is expensive compared to a traditional dextrose based prolotherapy solution so one uses a 'rifle' approach rather than a 'shotgun' approach.

Studies have shown that when performing intra-articular injections of the shoulder and hip 'blind' (without any type of imaging), orthopedic doctors have a miss rate of around 70%. When injecting under ultrasound, the miss rate is exactly 0% because the doctor can see the joint, see the needle entering the joint, and see the fluid entering the joint. The conventional needle-guidance imaging for intra-articular injections is fluoroscopy (3 dimensional xray). The disadvantages of 'fluro' are that it's expensive, it's more of an ordeal (lots of people standing around in blue and machines that go 'beep'), and it involves exposure to radiation.