First Opinion Veterinary Ultrasound

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First Opinion Veterinary Ultrasound CPD ultrasound courses & reporting for first-opinion vets. No time to train, no one to ask? https://www.fovu.co.uk/facebook-free-ebook

Start with our free guide: Veterinary Ultrasound for the Complete Beginner. Download my e-book: A Complete Guide To Help You Learn The Basics of Ultrasound
https://www.fovu.co.uk/veterinary-ultrasound-free-e-book

Teaching - Online Ultrasound Courses 🐶
https://fovu.mykajabi.com/ultrasound-courses

Community - Join in the conversation! 😺 https://www.facebook.com/groups/FirstOpinionVeterinaryUltrasound/

Scanning - Book my services 🎛️
https://fovu.mykajabi.com/book-a-scan

Reviews - Ultrasound Machines 📝
https://fovu.mykajabi.com/machine-reviews

16/10/2026

A dog is a dog and a cat is a cat. But your ultrasound presets? They're not quite so bothered. 🐶🐱

This week's FOVU Feedback Friday question made me smile:

"Why does the abdominal cat preset work better on this small dog than the small dog abdomen preset?"

Well, here's the thing...

Presets are made up!

They're simply someone's idea of the best starting settings for a particular scan. And quite often, that someone is your machine distributor rather than the manufacturer.

So just because a preset says 'small dog abdomen' doesn't mean it's automatically the best one to use.

My advice is to experiment and find out which presets work best for you and the animals you scan.

And here's a useful little tip: many machines will let you save your own presets. So when you find a starting point that works really well, you may be able to save it for next time.

Have you ever used the 'wrong' preset because it actually worked better? I'd love to know!

🐾 Got an ultrasound image or question you'd like me to look at?

Comment FFF and we'll send you the submission form for a future FOVU Feedback Friday.

Have you ever finished an abdominal scan and had that niggling thought:“Did I actually check everything?”It’s very easy ...
15/10/2026

Have you ever finished an abdominal scan and had that niggling thought:

“Did I actually check everything?”

It’s very easy to start following whatever catches your eye on the screen — particularly when you’re under pressure or you find something you weren’t expecting.

Before you know it, you’ve moved around the abdomen and you’re trying to remember exactly what you have and haven’t looked at properly.

This is one of the reasons I’m such a fan of having a structure to follow when you scan.

And it isn’t something you grow out of as you become more experienced.

The experienced ultrasonographers I know still use structure. With practise, it simply becomes more fluid and intuitive.

Having that familiar route through the scan can help you know you’ve checked each organ, reduce backtracking and leave more of your attention free for what you’re actually seeing and the clinical decisions you need to make.

I’ve written a blog about why structure can make such a difference to your scanning — including what it can look like when you’re working under pressure.

Comment STRUCTURE below and I’ll send you the link.

You’ve found a mass on an abdominal ultrasound. Now you’re trying to work out what on earth it’s attached to…This came u...
13/10/2026

You’ve found a mass on an abdominal ultrasound. Now you’re trying to work out what on earth it’s attached to…

This came up during one of our 5-Day Ultrasound Challenges, when a vet had found a palpable mass but was struggling to work out where it was coming from on the scan.

It can be tempting to find the mass with your probe and then try to follow it back to the organ it’s attached to. But that can actually make things quite tricky.

Instead, I’d go back to scanning the abdomen in a systematic way.

By that, I mean working through each organ in turn and examining the whole organ in two planes.

And if you’re still getting used to some of the ultrasound terminology, two planes simply means looking all the way through the organ in one direction, then rotating your probe 90° and looking through it again in the other direction. That’s what we mean by examining an organ in two planes.

So, for example, I’d work systematically through the liver like this. Then the stomach. Then the spleen.

As you properly examine each organ, you can start ruling out where the mass isn’t attached — which can help you work out where it might actually be coming from.

This is one of the reasons I teach vets to have a structure to follow when they scan. It gives you something to come back to when you find something unexpected and you’re not quite sure what to do next.

Save this one for the next time you find something you weren’t expecting. 🔖

09/10/2026

👀 **Can you spot the pancreas in this scan?**

You've found the duodenum, but can you work out exactly where the right limb of the pancreas is?

That's the question I was sent for this week's FOVU Feedback Friday.

And it's a good one, because the pancreas isn't always easy to pick out from the surrounding tissue.

So, what should you be looking for?

🔎 **A triangular-shaped structure** alongside the duodenum.

🔎 **The pancreaticoduodenal vein**, which you can often see running through its centre.

In this week's video, I'll talk you through the scan and show you how to use these landmarks to identify the right limb of the pancreas.

**Have a look at the image before I point it out. Can you find it?**

And if you've got an ultrasound image you'd like my help with, I'd love to see it!

👇 **Comment FFF below and we'll send you the form to submit your scan for a future FOVU Feedback Friday.**

29/09/2026

For two years, one vet tried to improve at ultrasound by picking up the probe and learning as they went.

After completing The Basics, they had some very honest advice for other vets:

“Don’t do what I did and spend 2 years learning by just picking up the probe without a plan or basic understanding first…”

Their biggest takeaway was practical too: scan the full abdomen, rather than stopping when you find the first abnormality. That finding might not be the reason for the patient’s clinical signs.

They said they now have a much better idea of what they’re scanning for and how to approach it.

I’m all for getting the probe in your hand and having a go. But having a plan for what you’re practising can make that time much more useful.

That’s what we work on in Veterinary Ultrasound: The Basics, using your own machine and patients, with opportunities to send me scans for feedback.

The next live course starts Monday 5 October.

Comment BASICS and I’ll send you the details.

Camilla

Have you ever come back from some ultrasound training feeling motivated... only to find it much harder when you're stand...
28/09/2026

Have you ever come back from some ultrasound training feeling motivated... only to find it much harder when you're standing in front of your own machine with a real patient?

There can be quite a gap between understanding what you're being shown and being able to put it into practice on your own.

And that doesn't necessarily mean you need more information.

Sometimes you need a way to take what you're learning and practise it systematically in the environment you actually work in.

That's a big part of how I teach Veterinary Ultrasound: The Basics.

We work through your machine and settings, a systematic approach to the abdominal scan, recognising what you're seeing and putting it into a structured report — while you're practising back in your own clinic.

And lots more!

The next live course starts Monday 5th October, and enrolment is open now.

👉 Comment BASICS and I'll send you the details if you'd like to know more.

Camilla

24/09/2026

Perhaps you covered ultrasound at vet school, or you’ve had some teaching since.

But using it independently, on your own machine and with a patient in front of you, can feel quite different.

Perhaps you weren’t sure where to start, or whether you’d recognise what you were looking at. So you found another way forward.

I hear this from vets who are capable and conscientious. They’ve often learnt some ultrasound already.

But using it independently, on their own machine and with a patient in front of them, can feel quite different.

And when you scan less often, it becomes harder to build the familiarity that helps you feel ready to try next time.

If this sounds familiar, you’re exactly the sort of vet I had in mind when I created Veterinary Ultrasound: The Basics.

We start with your machine, then build a systematic way to approach abdominal scans and practise what you’re learning at work.

The next live course starts Monday 5 October. You can find the details here:

https://www.fovu.co.uk/ultrasound-basics

17/09/2026

How many of these have you felt while scanning? 👆

The second-guessing. Worrying you’ll miss something. Not knowing where to start. Fighting with your machine.

And then those scans where things start to click and you think, “OK… I know what I’m looking for.”

These words are based on comments vets have shared with me before and after doing Veterinary Ultrasound: The Basics.

And I think they sum up ultrasound confidence rather nicely.

Being more confident doesn’t mean knowing everything or never having doubts. It’s having a system to follow, knowing what you’re looking for and feeling happier to pick up the probe and have a go.

Which brings me to some good news… 🎉

Veterinary Ultrasound: The Basics is back, and our next live course starts 5th October.

If you’ve been meaning to work on your ultrasound skills and would like to see what we cover, comment BASICS below and I’ll send you all the details 👇

If you want to get BETTER at veterinary ultrasound and improve your diagnosis, here's a little bit about me so you know ...
15/09/2026

If you want to get BETTER at veterinary ultrasound and improve your diagnosis, here's a little bit about me so you know who you're learning from.

And when you're done flicking through my photos I’d love to know who’s here. Are you already using ultrasound in practice, or are you still working up to picking up the probe? 👇

11/09/2026

Uterus or small intestine? 🤔

That was the question sent in with this week’s FOVU Feedback Friday scan.

In the video, I talk through what I can see and the clues that help me decide which structure we’re looking at.

And a quick tip if you’re submitting your own scan: where possible, download the clip directly from your ultrasound machine rather than filming the screen with your phone. It helps avoid glare and reflections and makes it much easier for me to see what’s going on. 🔍

💬 What do you think — would you have said uterus or intestine?

Or leave me a question about the video in the comments.

Want your own scan featured in a future FOVU Feedback Friday?

👉 Facebook: Submit your scan here: https://form.jotform.com/250646882585369

Your question could be the one I talk through next Friday. 💗

Camilla x

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