Terry DuBose, MS, RDMS, FSDMS, FAIUM

Terry J. DuBose, MS, RDMS, FSDMS, FAIUM, has recently retired from his post as Director of the Diagnostic Medical Sonography Division at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He has relocated from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Austin, Texas.

How did you become interested in the field of sonography?

I had a BS in Business Administration, and after I came back from Vietnam, I spent two years protesting the Vietnam War fulltime. When I decided I wanted to get into health services, I went to a career counselor at the Texas Hospital Association. He looked at my background, which included photography and silk screening, and recommended radiography. I entered school, and then went to work at Seton Hospital. I heard about ultrasound (sonography now) from some colleagues who had been at the University of California and started requesting the hospital buy a machine. When the first sonographic machine in Austin showed up, I was on the loading dock. They basically put me in a cubicle in ICU and told me to figure it out. I got a text book, Sample and Sarti, and started scanning myself until I could duplicate the liver and gallbladder in the book. I was doing special procedures at the time, and I began doing more and more sonography. 1979 was the last time I took an X-ray.

What are the most significant technological advances you’ve seen over the course of your career?

I think there were really three that were the greatest sonographic advances. The first is real-time, and the second is color Doppler and spectral Doppler integration, and the third is 3D.

What do you expect to see over the next 10 years?

I think that image fusion, integrating sonography with CT and MRI, and the use of 3D will continue to develop. 3D imaging is an interesting case of a solution in search of a problem.  3D images of a baby’s face help a lot when communicating a diagnosis to parents, especially in case of something like a cleft palate. But diagnostically, we can see that with 2D. Volumetric studies will lead to great advances in estimating fetal cranial volume and age. Also, the fetal liver volume will tell us more about maternal diabetes and fetal responses. Luis Gonçalves has done fetal heart reconstruction using power Doppler with 3D acquisition and then inversion, so you only see the blood flow of the fetal heart and great vessels, and you’re able to rotate in real time while viewing the beating. Refined, this will gives us incredible views of the fetal heart. We’re doing things we couldn’t do before, and sonography  is better for the fetus than MRI and CT.

What has been your most rewarding or memorable experience in sonography?

Getting the Kenneth Gottesfeld Award for published research in 1985 from the Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography gives me the most satisfaction. Frank Hadlock and Larry Waldroup were the peer reviewers on that article. However, it is also one of the most frustrating experiences, because we are still not using 3D imaging to get measurements of the fetal cranium to calculate fetal age.

Do you have any advice for new sonographers?

Definitely go to an accredited program for your education because you will get the proper clinical education. Realize that this will be a lifelong learning situation, because the sonographic instrumentation is advancing rapidly, and you will always be learning something new.

What do you plan to do with your retirement?

UAMS made me an Associate Professor Emeritus, so I’ll still teach one course a semester online – at least until they decide they’re tired of me! I have relocated back to Austin, Texas and will play with my grandchildren.