Ultrasound Imaging Department

The Department of Ultrasound Imaging of Hangzhou First People's Hospital, affiliated with the School of Medicine of Westlake University, is a modern, comprehensive ultrasound medicine center integrating clinical diagnosis and treatment, teaching and research, and talent development. The department has an outstanding talent echelon and strong technical capabilities; personnel with master's or doctoral degrees account for more than 70%, and it has 20 physicians with senior professional titles and 1 assistant researcher. Its scientifically sound and well-developed personnel structure lays a solid foundation for precise, standardized ultrasound diagnosis and treatment.

The department follows the development philosophy of “precision, minimally invasive care, and comprehensiveness” and has established multiple distinctive, high-performing diagnostic and treatment programs. Multimodal breast ultrasound diagnosis is at a leading level in China and encompasses automated breast volume ultrasound, elastography, contrast-enhanced ultrasound, and MRI–ultrasound virtual fusion navigation technology. The department has clear advantages in the early diagnosis of breast cancer and the combined imaging diagnosis of breast lesions. Interventional ultrasound diagnosis and treatment techniques are mature, and the department routinely performs thermal ablation of solid tumors in the liver, thyroid, and other organs; CT/MRI-guided ablation of difficult lesions; ultrasound-guided histologic/cytologic puncture biopsy, PTCD, contrast-enhanced ultrasound, microscopic imaging, and other techniques, using minimally invasive methods to relieve patients’ suffering and resolve diagnostic challenges.

Ultrasound prenatal diagnosis began in 2009, and the department was the first medical institution in Hangzhou to obtain qualifications for prenatal diagnosis. It provides screening in early pregnancy and in mid-to-late pregnancy, fetal echocardiography, systematic fetal ultrasound examinations for early- and mid-pregnancy screening, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, umbilical cord blood puncture, fetal intrauterine therapy, and other techniques. It also provides pelvic floor ultrasound, fallopian tube contrast imaging, and three-dimensional gynecological examinations; every year, it participates in the hospital-wide rescue of critically ill pregnant and postpartum women, doing everything possible to safeguard maternal and infant safety. The department likewise has extensive experience in the cardiovascular field, including transesophageal echocardiography, contrast imaging of the cardiac chambers and myocardium, integrated cervicocerebral assessment, pharmacologic stress testing, and other procedures. In recent years, the department has also introduced musculoskeletal ultrasound and skin and nail ultrasound, achieving comprehensive development of its subspecialties.

In teaching and research, the department is a national standardized residency training base. It implements a refined mentor-based teaching model and has 26 professionally certified teaching instructors. It has repeatedly received provincial- and hospital-level honors as an outstanding standardized residency training base and for outstanding teaching.

In the future, the department will always remain true to its patient-centered mission and, relying on the comprehensive disciplinary strengths of a tertiary Grade A hospital, will safeguard the health of patients from all walks of life through superb technology, high-quality service, and innovativephilosophy.