Book excerpt: This book is a quick start guide that equips students and professionals with musculoskeletal ultrasound image acquisition basics. Written in plain language, it focuses on the common, clinically relevant conditions diagnosable by musculoskeletal ultrasound. With many verbal and illustrative mnemonics, images, and whimsical illustrations, the manual provides many different methods to remember complicated anatomy and examination protocols. Manual of Musculoskeletal Ultrasound teaches a protocol-based approach designed to help people understand why and how we perform musculoskeletal ultrasound studies. Each chapter covers a different body part and starts with basic anatomy and the clinical questions we want an ultrasound examination of that body part to answer. The protocols within each chapter tell the student precisely how and where to move the probe to obtain and optimize images. It demonstrates what a normal sonographic image should look like and explains what dynamic or structural issues would be abnormal in certain clinical circumstances. The protocol is a checklist that can be practiced on a partner or the reader themself. Chapters also discuss pathologic entities discernable on ultrasound, pitfalls to avoid, and imaging tricks of the trade. This manual is invaluable for students and practicing clinicians in rheumatology, orthopedics, physiatry, neurology, sports medicine, advanced practice, and sonography.