This study analyzes the practices and ideas involved in the academic formation of an important social group: the doctors who, given their significant hierarchical position in the production of the obstetric ultrasound mark seem, in our opinion to be an interesting and fundamental "stopping" place in the circular flow of ideas, marks and things that form the ultrasound object. The ethnographic observation of the teaching situation allows the dynamic capture of this fundamental moment when beginners are introduced to a technology that was historically (and provisionally) considered indispensable in prenatal monitoring. The intention is thus to apprehend how the "visual socialization" of future professionals is produced; the empirical research showed that, together with a certain kind of gaze, other quite heterogeneous elements are also taught to the future doctors. A tension that is significantly present in the field is the dichotomy between an eminently clinical approach and another one that is strongly technicist. The contingent precariousness of technological devices evidences various paradoxes and incongruences in the latter. The changes during the development of the various processes that are articulated in the observed field are discussed in terms that provide insights into the works of the social groups that produced them.
Medical imaging technology; obstetric ultrasound; socio-technical studies; medical teaching