When was ultrasound first used in medicine?
Medical ultrasound
A contrast medium for medical ultrasonography is a formulation of encapsulated gaseous microbubbles to increase echogenicity of blood, discovered by Dr Raymond Gramiak in 1968 and named contrast-enhanced ultrasound. This contrast medical imaging modality is clinically used throughout the world, in particular for echocardiography in the United States and for ultrasound radiology in Europe and Asia.
John J. Wild
Wild emigrated to the United States in 1946, taking a position at the University of Minnesota. After starting at the school's department of surgery, he shifted to the electrical engineering department in 1950. As a surgeon during World War II he had seen many patients who had suffered bowel failure experienced because of bomb explosions from German V-1 flying bombs and had developed a technique called the "Wild tube" to deal with the problem. After seeing patients in the U.S. with similar conditions, Wild conceived the idea of using ultrasound as a noninvasive means to determine the level of injuries suffered in the intestines of patients, with the sound bouncing back from the tissue identifying the thickness and resiliency of that portion of the intestine. He had developed the technique after having heard of high-frequency sounds being used as a means to identify cracks in tank armor. While the early machines operated at too low a resolution for the purpose of scanning the intestines, by 1951 he and Dr. John Reid gained access to equipment that operated at the 15 MHz range, providing the detail needed to scan internally and to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue. Wild and his team were able to take ultrasound scans of breast tissue that could be used as a noninvasive means to identify and diagnose tumors. Together with Reid, Wild developed tools for scanning rectal and vaginal tissues.
History of medicine
The Great War spurred the usage of Roentgen's X-ray, and the electrocardiograph, for the monitoring of internal bodily functions. This was followed in the inter-war period by the development of the first anti-bacterial agents such as the sulpha antibiotics.
Medical ultrasound
Medical ultrasound (also known as diagnostic sonography or ultrasonography) is a diagnostic imaging technique based on the application of ultrasound. It is used to create an image of internal body structures such as tendons, muscles, joints, blood vessels, and internal organs. Its aim is often to find a source of a disease or to exclude pathology. The practice of examining pregnant women using ultrasound is called obstetric ultrasound, and was an early development and application of clinical ultrasonography.
Pre-hospital ultrasound
Prehospital ultrasound is the specialized application of ultrasound by emergency service personnel, such as paramedics, to guide immediate care and treatment procedures. Like conventional ultrasound, it is a device that produces cyclic sound pressure to penetrate a medium ( flesh) and reveal details about the inner structure of the medium.
Tracheal intubation
In 1854, a Spanish singing teacher named Manuel García (1805–1906) became the first man to view the functioning glottis in a living human. In 1858, French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut (1818–1891) developed a new technique for non-surgical orotracheal intubation to bypass laryngeal obstruction resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane. In 1880, Scottish surgeon William Macewen (1848–1924) reported on his use of orotracheal intubation as an alternative to tracheotomy to allow a patient with glottic edema to breathe, as well as in the setting of general anesthesia with chloroform. In 1895, Alfred Kirstein (1863–1922) of Berlin first described direct visualization of the vocal cords, using an esophagoscope he had modified for this purpose; he called this device an autoscope.
Floyd Firestone
Floyd Alburn Firestone (1898–1986) was an acoustical physicist, who in 1940 while a professor at the University of Michigan invented the first practical ultrasonic testing method and apparatus. He was granted US Patent 2,280,226 for the invention in 1942. Manufactured by Sperry Corporation, the testing device was known variously as the Firestone-Sperry Reflectoscope, the Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope, the Sperry Reflectoscope and sometimes also just as a Supersonic Reflectoscope, the name Firestone had originally coined for the instrument. The technology is not just used in quality control in factories to reject defective parts before shipment, but also revolutionized transportation safety. For example, ultrasonic testing is used for safety maintenance inspection of railroad cars, particularly axles and wheels, aircraft, particularly fuselages, and other transportation vessels for material fatigue. Dr. Firestone’s ultrasonic pulse echo technique for metal defect testing was also later applied in medical diagnosis, giving birth to the field of Echocardiography and to the field of Medical Ultrasonography, generally. Dr. Firestone was the editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America from 1939-1957. Among Firestone’s many other inventions in his field are in a single year an “automatic device for the minute inspection of flaws”, “a new and useful improvement in hook-up of electrical apparatus”, and “[a] device for measuring noise”, and, even, later a “musical typewriter”.
Imagery analysis
This is also about the time when ultrasound would make its appearance. For the first time it was possible to view variations in tissue density which made it possible to detect possible tissue and organ anomalies. Another application was that of detecting material flaws in manufacturing.
Amniocentesis
Up to mid 1970s amniocentesis procedures were done 'blind‘. Doctors Jens Bang and Allen Northeved from Denmark were the first to report amniocentesis done with the guide of an ultrasound in 1972. Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) was first performed by Italian biologist Giuseppe Simoni in 1983. Now real-time ultrasound is used during all invasive procedures because it provides for the safety of the fetus and accuracy of results.
Stethoscope
The stethoscope was invented in France in 1816 by René Laennec at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris. It consisted of a wooden tube and was monaural. Laennec invented the stethoscope because he was uncomfortable placing his ear on women's chests to hear heart sounds. He observed that a rolled piece of paper, placed between the patient's chest and his ear, could amplify heart sounds without requiring physical contact. Laennec's device was similar to the common ear trumpet, a historical form of hearing aid; indeed, his invention was almost indistinguishable in structure and function from the trumpet, which was commonly called a "microphone". Laennec called his device the "stethoscope" ("stetho-" + "-scope", "chest scope"), and he called its use "mediate auscultation", because it was auscultation with a tool intermediate between the patient's body and the physician's ear. (Today the word "auscultation" denotes all such listening, mediate or not.) The first flexible stethoscope of any sort may have been a binaural instrument with articulated joints not very clearly described in 1829. In 1840, Golding Bird described a stethoscope he had been using with a flexible tube. Bird was the first to publish a description of such a stethoscope but he noted in his paper the prior existence of an earlier design (which he thought was of little utility) which he described as the snake ear trumpet. Bird's stethoscope had a single earpiece.
The Verifier
The Verifier makes use of ultrasound technology, a method of using high-intensity acoustic energy which is above the limits of human hearing. Just as it has done for other fields, ultrasound technology offers unprecedented access and accuracy with The Verifier. The old system of measuring oil deliveries and inventory involves either climbing onto the tank and ‘sticking it’ with a ruler or pumping air into a petrometer and converting a pressure reading of the weight of the oil. These systems were developed when oil was inexpensive and when accuracy and convenience were not essential.
Verifier technology confirms an oil delivery within 1/10 of an inch, recording the exact date, time and amount of heating oil delivered to the tank and checking the amount of heating oil delivered. An ultrasonic ping is sent from the device to the heating oil, an echo is received back, and the Verifier’s complex, patented algorithm then figures the time between when the ping was sent and the echo received, compensating for oil temperature variations. The system is precise, safe, and clean.
The history of ultrasound technology began in 1794, when Italian Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) first noticed the phenomenon in nature. The human application of ultrasound technology developed remarkably in the last 100 years, and was influenced heavily by World War I and by World War II, in which Sonar, or sound navigation and ranging, was utilized. Following World War II, applications of ultrasound developed, transforming many industries.
Emergency ultrasound
Emergency ultrasound or point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is the application of ultrasound at the point of care to make immediate patient-care decisions. It is performed by the health care professional caring for the injured or ill persons. This point-of-care use of ultrasound is often to evaluate an emergency medical condition, in settings such as an emergency department, critical care unit, ambulance, or combat zone.
Arthur M. Sackler
Sackler began his career practicing medicine, where he specialized in biological psychiatry. In the early 1940s he joined medical advertising agency William Douglas McAdams Inc. From 1949 - 1954, he served as a research director at Creedmoor Institute for Psychobiological Studies. Sackler collaborated on 140 papers based on neuroendocrinology, psychiatry, and experimental medicine. He was the first doctor to use ultrasound for diagnosis, identified histamine as a hormone, and advocated for its use as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy. He is also credited with helping to racially integrate New York City's first blood banks.
Sound from ultrasound
The first experimental systems were built over 30 years ago, although these first versions only played simple tones. It was not until much later (see above) that the systems were built for practical listening use.
Emergency ultrasound
Point of care ultrasound is sometimes the only option in the evaluation of injured persons who are too ill for transport to other imaging modalities (i.e. computed tomography, or CT scan) or whose illness is so acute that medical decisions in their care need to be made in seconds to minutes. It is also increasingly used to guide and triage care in resource-limited situations, in rural or medically underserved areas.
Acoustic microscopy
Ultrasound is broadly defined as any sound having a frequency above 20 kHz, which is approximately the highest frequency that can be detected by the human ear. However, the acoustic microscopes emit ultrasound ranging from 5 MHz to beyond 400 MHz so that micrometre size resolution can be achieved. The ultrasound that penetrates a sample may be scattered, absorbed or reflected by the internal features or the material itself. These actions are analogous to the behavior of light. Ultrasound that is reflected from an internal feature, or (in some applications) that has traveled through the entire thickness of the sample, is used to make acoustic images.
D. Jackson Coleman
His interest in physics led him to develop new ultrasound technologies for examining and treating the eye. Together with William Konig and Louis Katz, he created the first commercially available B-scan ultrasound equipment. His numerous patents include those for an ultrasonically vibrated surgical knife, an ultrasonic diagnostic and therapeutic transducer assembly (with methodology), a system of therapeutic ultrasound and real-time ultrasonic scanning, and an ultrasound system for corneal biometry. His pioneering surgical techniques include the first vitreo-retinal surgery in New York and, using the ultrasound that he developed, demonstrating that operating at an earlier stage in ocular trauma could vastly improve the patient's prognosis for recovery. He has specialized in vitreo-retinal surgery and has had a career-long interest in imaging research. With a generous gift from Charles and Margaret Dyson, He established the Margaret M. Dyson Vision Research Institute, one of the major retinal research programs in the world. The Dyson Institute continues research on the causes and possible therapies for age related macular degeneration and ultrasound imaging of the retina and choroid.
Management of prostate cancer
High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) was first used in the 1940s and 1950s in efforts to destroy tumors in the central nervous system. Since then, HIFU has been shown to be effective at destroying malignant tissue in the brain, prostate, spleen, liver, kidney, breast, and bone.
Joseph Maroon
Maroon has conducted extensive research into neurotrauma, brain tumors and diseases of the spine, which led to many innovative techniques for diagnosing and treating these disorders. Maroon was the first to publish on the use of ultrasound to detect venous air emboli (1968). Maroon et al. were the first to publish on the use of ultrasound to detect air in patients during neurosurgical procedures (1969) and to assess ophthalmic artery reversal of flow indicating a thrombosis of the carotid artery (1969). Maroon et al. published the simplified instrumentation for performing microvascular surgery in 1973 and in 1975, they pioneered the microsurgical approach to intra-orbital tumors. In 1977, they pioneered the use of CT scanning as a guidance system for performing intracranial biopsy. In the same year, Maroon published the first paper on “burning hands” syndrome related to sports related spinal cord injuries in JAMA.
Medical ultrasound
In 1962, after about two years of work, Joseph Holmes, William Wright, and Ralph Meyerdirk developed the first compound contact B-mode scanner. Their work had been supported by U.S. Public Health Services and the University of Colorado. Wright and Meyerdirk left the University to form Physionic Engineering Inc., which launched the first commercial hand-held articulated arm compound contact B-mode scanner in 1963. This was the start of the most popular design in the history of ultrasound scanners.
Portable ultrasound
In November 2015, Philips launched a new era of portable ultrasound when it came out with the Lumify portable ultrasound machine, a first-of-its-kind portable ultrasound system that offers highly advanced transducers that connect via USB cable to off-the-shelf compatible Android devices. Ultrasound exams are performed on the free Lumify app, available at the Google Play Store, which offers features that most point-of-care ultrasound users are familiar with (such as entering patient data, depth, gain, color doppler, measurements, etc.). Because of the flexible pricing model—available as a subscription for as little as $199 per month, or available for outright purchase—Lumify is accessible to clinicians who might otherwise be unable to acquire an ultrasound system.
Ultrasound
Medical sonography (ultrasonography) is an ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging technique used to visualize muscles, tendons, and many internal organs to capture their size, structure and any pathological lesions with real time tomographic images. Ultrasound has been used by radiologists and sonographers to image the human body for at least 50 years and has become a widely used diagnostic tool. The technology is relatively inexpensive and portable, especially when compared with other techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT). Ultrasound is also used to visualize fetuses during routine and emergency prenatal care. Such diagnostic applications used during pregnancy are referred to as obstetric sonography. As currently applied in the medical field, properly performed ultrasound poses no known risks to the patient. Sonography does not use ionizing radiation, and the power levels used for imaging are too low to cause adverse heating or pressure effects in tissue.
Although the long-term effects due to ultrasound exposure at diagnostic intensity are still unknown, currently most doctors feel that the benefits to patients outweigh the risks. The ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle has been advocated for an ultrasound examination – that is, keeping the scanning time and power settings as low as possible but consistent with diagnostic imaging – and that by that principle nonmedical uses, which by definition are not necessary, are actively discouraged.
Ultrasonic testing
On May 27, 1940, U.S. researcher Dr. Floyd Firestone of the University of Michigan applies for a U.S. invention patent for the first practical ultrasonic testing method. The patent is granted on April 21, 1942 as U.S. Patent No. 2,280,226, titled "Flaw Detecting Device and Measuring Instrument". Extracts from the first two paragraphs of the patent for this entirely new nondestructive testing method succinctly describe the basics of such ultrasonic testing. "My invention pertains to a device for detecting the presence of inhomogeneities of density or elasticity in materials. For instance if a casting has a hole or a crack within it, my device allows the presence of the flaw to be detected and its position located, even though the flaw lies entirely within the casting and no portion of it extends out to the surface. ... The general principle of my device consists of sending high frequency vibrations into the part to be inspected, and the determination of the time intervals of arrival of the direct and reflected vibrations at one or more stations on the surface of the part."
Medical ultrasound
Ultrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies which are higher than those audible to humans (>20,000 Hz). Ultrasonic images, also known as sonograms, are made by sending pulses of ultrasound into tissue using a probe. The ultrasound pulses echo off tissues with different reflection properties and are recorded and displayed as an image.
Radiographer
The United States saw its first medical X-ray obtained using a discharge tube of Ivan Pulyui's design. In January 1896, on reading of Röntgen's discovery, Frank Austin of Dartmouth College tested all of the discharge tubes in the physics laboratory and found that only the Pulyui tube produced X-rays. This was a result of Pulyui's inclusion of an oblique "target" of mica, used for holding samples of fluorescent material, within the tube. On 3 February 1896 Gilman Frost, professor of medicine at the college, and his brother Edwin Frost, professor of physics, exposed the wrist of Eddie McCarthy, whom Gilman had treated some weeks earlier for a fracture, to the X-rays and collected the resulting image of the broken bone on gelatin photographic plates obtained from Howard Langill, a local photographer also interested in Röntgen's work.
Medical ultrasound
The first demonstration of color Doppler was by Geoff Stevenson, who was involved in the early developments and medical use of Doppler shifted ultrasonic energy.
Obstetric ultrasonography
Current evidence indicates that diagnostic ultrasound is safe for the unborn child, unlike radiographs, which employ ionizing radiation. Randomized controlled trials have followed children up to ages 8–9, with no significant differences in vision, hearing, school performance, dyslexia, or speech and neurologic development by exposure to ultrasound. In one randomized trial, the children with greater exposure to ultrasound had a reduction in perinatal mortality, and was attributed to the increased detection of anomalies in the ultrasound group.
Radiographer
The first use of X-rays under clinical conditions was by John Hall-Edwards in Birmingham, England on 11 January 1896, when he radiographed a needle stuck in the hand of an associate. On 14 February 1896, Hall-Edwards also became the first to use X-rays in a surgical operation.
Radiology
Medical ultrasonography uses ultrasound (high-frequency sound waves) to visualize soft tissue structures in the body in real time. No ionizing radiation is involved, but the quality of the images obtained using ultrasound is highly dependent on the skill of the person (ultrasonographer) performing the exam and the patient's body size. Examinations of larger, overweight patients may have a decrease in image quality as their subcutaneous fat absorbs more of the sound waves. This results in fewer sound waves penetrating to organs and reflecting back to the transducer, resulting in loss of information and a poorer quality image. Ultrasound is also limited by its inability to image through air pockets (lungs, bowel loops) or bone. Its use in medical imaging has developed mostly within the last 30 years. The first ultrasound images were static and two-dimensional (2D), but with modern ultrasonography, 3D reconstructions can be observed in real time, effectively becoming "4D".
Emil Grubbe
Emil Herman Grubbe (1 January 1875 — 26 March 1960) was probably the first American to use x-rays in the treatment of cancer. He was born in Chicago, and received his medical training at a homeopathic institute: the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. It was there that Grubbe assembled the first x-ray machine in Chicago in 1896, and that same year, used it to treat a woman with recurrent carcinoma of the breast. He assembled the machine and began to use it in treatments less than a year after Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of the x-ray. By 1960, Grubbe had instructed over 7000 other doctors in the medical use of x-rays. In the course of his lifetime, he underwent more than 90 operations for multiple cancers caused by his intense, ongoing exposure to radiation, a disease from which he died. Honors were bestowed upon Grubbe by numerous institutions, including the American Cancer Society. He was also a fellow of the American College of Physicians. Grubbe left money in his will to the Chicago Radiological Society to fund the Grubbe Memorial Award.
Medical ultrasound
Intravascular ultrasound ("IVUS") uses a specially designed catheter, with a miniaturized ultrasound probe attached to its distal end, which is then threaded inside a blood vessel. The proximal end of the catheter is attached to computerized ultrasound equipment and allows the application of ultrasound technology, such as piezoelectric transducer or CMUT, to visualize the endothelium (inner wall) of blood vessels in living individuals.
John J. Wild
John Julian Cuttance Wild (August 11, 1914 – September 18, 2009) was an English-born American physician who was part of the first group to use ultrasound for body imaging, most notably for diagnosing cancer. Modern ultrasonic diagnostic medical scans are descendants of the equipment Wild and his colleagues developed in the 1950s. He has been described as the "father of medical ultrasound".
Terason
Terason has shipped thousands of ultrasound systems to clinicians, hospitals, outpatient centers and OEM partners since 2000. Terason is the market leader in ultrasound-guided venous intervention. Terason systems are routinely used in the fields of vascular surgery, interventional radiology, endocrinology and nephrology, cardiology, musculoskeletal (MSK) and breast surgery. More recently, Terason is the first company that turns a laptop (MacBook Pro) into an ultrasound machine.
Radiography
X-rays were put to diagnostic use very early; for example, Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton opened a radiographic laboratory in the United Kingdom in 1896, before the dangers of ionizing radiation were discovered. Indeed, Marie Curie pushed for radiography to be used to treat wounded soldiers in World War I. Initially, many kinds of staff conducted radiography in hospitals, including Physicists, Photographers, Physicians, Nurses, and Engineers. The medical speciality of radiology grew up over many years around the new technology. When new diagnostic tests were developed, it was natural for the Radiographers to be trained in and to adopt this new technology. Radiographers now perform fluoroscopy, computed tomography, mammography, ultrasound, nuclear medicine and magnetic resonance imaging as well. Although a nonspecialist dictionary might define radiography quite narrowly as "taking X-ray images", this has long been only part of the work of "X-ray Departments", Radiographers, and Radiologists. Initially, radiographs were known as roentgenograms, while "Skiagrapher" (from the Ancient Greek words for "shadow" and "writer") was used until about 1918 to mean "Radiographer".
Ultrasound
Starting at the turn of the century, ultrasound technology began to be used by the beef cattle industry to improve animal health and the yield of cattle operations. Ultrasound is used to evaluate fat thickness, rib eye area, and intramuscular fat in living animals. It is also used to evaluate the health and characteristics of unborn calves.
Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging
The phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was first described in molecular beams (1938) and bulk matter (1946), work later acknowledged by the award of a joint Nobel prize in 1952. Further investigation laid out the principles of relaxation times leading to nuclear spectroscopy. In 1973, the first simple NMR image was published and the first medical imaging in 1977, entering the clinical arena in the early 1980s. In 1984, NMR medical imaging was renamed MRI. Initial attempts to image the heart were confounded by respiratory and cardiac motion, solved by using cardiac ECG gating, faster scan techniques and breath hold imaging. Increasingly sophisticated techniques were developed including cine imaging and techniques to characterise heart muscle as normal or abnormal (fat infiltration, oedematous, iron loaded, acutely infarcted or fibrosed).
History of tracheal intubation
While all these surgical advances were taking place, many important developments were also taking place in the science of optics. Many new optical instruments with medical applications were invented during the 19th century. In 1805, a German army surgeon named Philipp von Bozzini (1773–1809) invented a device he called the "lichtleiter" (or light-guiding instrument). This instrument, the ancestor of the modern endoscope, was used to examine the urethra, the human urinary bladder, rectum, oropharynx and nasopharynx. The instrument consisted of a candle within a metal chimney; a mirror on the inside reflected light from the candle through attachments into the relevant body cavity. The practice of gastric endoscopy in humans was pioneered by United States Army surgeon William Beaumont (1785–1853) in 1822 with the cooperation of his patient Alexis St. Martin (1794–1880), a victim of an accidental gunshot wound to the stomach. In 1853, Antonin Jean Desormeaux (1815–1882) of Paris modified Bozzini's lichtleiter such that a mirror would reflect light from a kerosene lamp through a long metal channel. Referring to this instrument as an "endoscope" (he is credited with coining this term), Desormeaux employed it to examine the urinary bladder. However, like Bozzini's lichtleiter, Desormeaux's endoscope was of limited utility due to its propensity to become very hot during use. In 1868, Adolph Kussmaul (1822–1902) of Germany performed the first esophagogastroduodenoscopy (a diagnostic procedure in which an endoscope is used to visualize the esophagus, stomach and duodenum) on a living human. The subject was a sword-swallower, who swallowed a metal tube with a length of 47 centimeters and a diameter of 13 millimeters. On 2 October 1877, Berlin urologist Maximilian Carl-Friedrich Nitze (1848–1906) and Viennese instrument maker Josef Leiter (1830–1892) introduced the first practical cystourethroscope with an electric light source. The instrument's biggest drawback was the tungsten filament incandescent light bulb (invented by Alexander Lodygin, 1847–1923), which became very hot and required a complicated water cooling system. In 1881, Polish physician Jan Mikulicz-Radecki (1850–1905) created the first rigid gastroscope for practical applications.
Olaf von Ramm
Olaf von Ramm is the Thomas Lord Professor of Engineering at Duke University. He is best known for his work in the development of medical instruments, particularly ultrasound systems. He holds the first patent on a three-dimensional ultrasound .
Lars Leksell
Two other examples of Leksell's innovation deserve to be mentioned. He was the first to apply ultrasound in neurosurgical diagnosis by the development of echoencephalography as early as 1955. Moreover, his double action rongeur has become an indispensable tool in the hands of most neurosurgeons.
Ultrasound energy
As stated above, properties of ultrasound energy traveling through biological tissues has been extensively studied in recent years. The attenuation due to scattering of energy in different tissues can be measured by a device called a transducer. Recorded information from transducers such as the relationship to the site of origin and intensity of the signal can then be put together to form images of what lies inside the target tissues. Higher frequency ultrasound waves generally produce higher resolution images, but attenuation also increases as frequency increases which restricts imaging depth. Consequently, the best frequency has been determined for each type of diagnostic test and body tissue. Some of the more common ultrasound tests include A-scans, M-scans, B-scans, and Doppler techniques. These test produce images ranging from one-dimensional images to moving, real-time two –dimensional images that can often be seen immediately on a screen. 
The advent of ultrasound technology has completely changed the medical diagnostic field due to its non-invasive characteristic. Medical professionals can now observe tissues within the body without having to physically enter the body. This reduces the amount of invasive and risky diagnostic procedures and increases the chances of a correct diagnosis. Some common medical imaging procedures include:
Laser ultrasonics
Historically, fundamental research into the nature of laser-ultrasonics was started in 1979, by Dewhurst and Palmer. They set up a new laboratory in the Department of Applied Physics, University of Hull. Dewhurst provided the laser-matter expertise and Palmer the ultrasound expertise. Investigations were directed towards the development of a scientific insight into physical processes converting laser-matter interaction into ultrasound. The studies were also aimed at assessing the characteristics of the ultrasound propagating from the near field into the far field. Importantly, quantitative measurements were performed between 1979 and 1982. In solids, the measurements included amplitudes of longitudinal and shear waves in absolute terms. Ultrasound generation by a laser pulse for both the thermoelastic regime and the transition to the plasma regime was examined. By comparing measurements with theoretical predictions, a description of the magnitude and direction of stresses leading to ultrasonic generation was presented for the first time. It led to the proposition that laser-generated ultrasound could be regarded as a standard acoustic source. Additionally, they showed that surface modification can sometimes be used to amplify the magnitude of ultrasonic signals.
Neuromuscular ultrasound
Neuromuscular ultrasound refers to a field in medicine in which ultrasound is used to diagnosis and guide treatment for people with neuromuscular diseases. Neuromuscular ultrasound is often combined with electrodiagnosis, and particularly nerve conduction studies and EMG, to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and add anatomic information to the functional information obtained with electrodiagnosis. It has been demonstrated that neuromuscular ultrasound adds value to the diagnosis of nerve disease in over 80% of cases.
Mammography
As a medical procedure that induces ionizing radiation, the origin of mammography can be traced to the discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895. In the late 1950s Robert Egan at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center combined a technique of low kVp with high mA and single emulsion films to devise a method of screening mammography for the first time. He published these results in 1959 in a paper, and subsequently in a 1964 book called "Mammography". The "Egan technique", as it became known, enabled physicians to detect calcification in breast tissue; of the 245 breast cancers that were confirmed by biopsy among 1,000 patients, Egan and his colleagues at M.D. Anderson were able to identify 238 cases by using his method, 19 of which were in patients whose physical examinations had revealed no breast pathology. Use of mammography as a screening technique spread clinically after a 1966 study demonstrating the impact of mammograms on mortality and treatment led by Philip Strax. This study, based in New York, was the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of mammography screening.
Ian Donald
Whilst Professor of Midwifery at Glasgow University, he first explored the use of ultrasound in the 1950s after seeing it used in the Glasgow shipyards to look for flaws in metallurgy. He became Regius Professor of Midwifery in 1955. His article "Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound", published 7 June 1958 in the medical journal The Lancet, was one of the defining publications in the field. Ultrasound has become an important aid to diagnosing fetal progress during pregnancy.
Sound from ultrasound
Where
Gravis Ultrasound
The first UltraSound was released in early October 1992, along with the Gravis PC GamePad. The Ultrasound was one of the first PC soundcards to feature 16-bit, stereo. The final revision (v3.74) of the GUS Classic features of onboard RAM (upgradeable to 1024 kB through DIP sockets), hardware analog mixer, and support for 16-bit recording through a separate daughterboard based on the Crystal Semiconductor CS4231 audio codec.
Charles Richard Whitfield
The use of ultrasound in medicine was pioneered by Donald, first at Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital and subsequently at Glasgow's new maternity hospital, the Queen Mother's Hospital (QMH), which opened in 1964. Developments in ultrasound complemented Whitfield's own research interests in fetal medicine but was still regarded with scepticism in some quarters. Whitfield had more success in gaining acceptance for obstetric ultrasound than Donald himself, who was sometimes viewed as an obsessive eccentric. As he recalled, "an honorary attachment with Professor Donald in Glasgow in 1964 had convinced me that obstetric ultrasound did have a future, but later in that year in America I was told it was just a dream of a mad, red-headed Scotsman, so I should forget it! I was told confidentially, nothing, no good will come of it, but of course that was wrong".
Imaging Lung Sound Behavior with Vibration Response Imaging
Since the invention of the stethoscope by René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec France in 1816, physicians have been utilizing lung sounds to diagnose various chest conditions. Today auscultation provides physicians with extensive information on the examination of the patient. The skills of the examiner however, vary, as seen in a clinical study that was conducted on the diagnosis of pneumonia in 2004.
Ultrasonography of chronic venous insufficiency of the legs
The Doppler effect was first described by Christian Doppler in 1843. Nearly forty years later in 1880, the piezoelectric effect was discovered and confirmed by Pierre and Jacques Curie. Both of these findings were used in the development of ultrasonography. The first ultrasound was applied to the human body for medical purposes by Dr. George Ludwig, University of Pennsylvania, in the late 1940s.
High-intensity focused ultrasound
Use of magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound was first cited and patented in 1992. The technology was later transferred to InsighTec in Haifa Israel in 1998. The InsighTec ExAblate 2000 was the first MRgFUS system to obtain FDA market approval in the United States.
[[Category:Medical ultrasonography]]
[[Category:Magnetic resonance imaging]]
[[Category:Medical physics]]
Space medicine
Ultrasound is the main diagnostic imaging tool on ISS and for the foreseeable future missions. X-rays and CT scans involve radiation which is unacceptable in the space environment. Though MRI uses magnetics to create images, it is too large at present to consider as a viable option. Ultrasound, which uses sound waves to create images and comes in laptop size packages, provides imaging of a wide variety of tissues and organs. It is currently being used to look at the eyeball and the optic nerve to help determine the cause(s) of changes that NASA has noted mostly in long duration astronauts. NASA is also pushing the limits of ultrasound use regarding musculoskeletal problems as these are some of the most common and most likely problems to occur. Significant challenges to using ultrasounds on space missions is training the astronaut to use the equipment (ultrasound technicians spend years in training and developing the skills necessary to be "good" at their job) as well as interpreting the images that are captured. Much of ultrasound interpretation is done real-time but it is impractical to train astronauts to actually read/interpret ultrasounds. Thus, the data is currently being sent back to mission control and forwarded to medical personnel to read and interpret. Future exploration class missions will need to be autonomous due to transmission times taking too long for urgent/emergent medical conditions. The ability to be autonomous, or to use other equipment such as MRIs, is currently being researched.
Medical ultrasound
Point of care emergency ultrasound has many applications in emergency medicine. This includes differentiating cardiac causes of acute breathlessness from pulmonary causes, and the Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) exam for assessing significant hemoperitoneum or pericardial tamponade after trauma. Other uses include assisting with differentiating causes of abdominal pain such as gallstones and kidney stones. Emergency Medicine Residency Programs have a substantial history of promoting the use of bedside ultrasound during physician training.
Fernando Bonilla-Musoles
Educated by the Jesuits, Bonilla graduated in Medicine from the University of Valencia in 1967, and received his PhD from that University in 1970. He had further study in Germany and Switzerland with Otto Käser. At that time, the first experimental apparatus for ultrasound in Gyncecology were being developed. His family financed the acquisition of the first three devices in 1969, which were installed at the Hospital Clínico Universitario of Valencia, in the old maternity hospital "La Cigüeña" and his own private practice, and he introduced obstetric and gynecologic ultrasound in Latin America in 70s.
Pregnancy test
Obstetric ultrasonography may also be used to detect pregnancy. Obstetric ultrasonography was first practiced in the 1960s; the first home test kit for hCG was invented in 1968. The kits went on the market in the United States and Europe in the mid-1970s.
Medical ultrasound
Obstetrical sonography was originally developed in the late 1950’s and 60’s by Sir Ian Donald and is commonly used during pregnancy to check on the development and presentation of the fetus. It can be used to identify many conditions that could be potentially harmful to the mother and/or baby possibly remaining undiagnosed or with delayed diagnosis in the absence of sonography. It is currently believed that the risk of leaving these conditions undiagnosed is greater than the small risk, if any, associated with undergoing an ultrasound scan. However, even where sonography is used routinely in obstetric appointments, its use for non-medical purposes such as fetal "keepsake" videos and photos is discouraged.
Portable ultrasound
The ADR 2130, designed by Marty Wilcox was the first portable ultrasound unit commercially available in the United States, being released in 1975. This unit weighed about 25 lbs, had 3 linear probes to choose from and used an oscilloscope for a display instead of a TV monitor. ADR was later purchased by ATL which later spun off its portable technology into a company that became Sonosite. ATL was later purchased by Philips while Sonosite came out with its first battery powered portable offering, the Sonosite 180 released in 1999. Previous to this, Ecton produced a low-cost portable cardiac ultrasound system that could be carried by hand in March 1998, called the Sonnet but the test prototypes were never put into full-scale production because of difficulty finding venture capital. Ecton was purchased by Acuson in 1999 and the Sonnet system was released as the Acuson Cypress Cypress portable ultrasound system in 2000. The first battery powered portable was the Organon Teknika MiniVisor produced in 1979, but which saw only limited production. The device was created by a team led by Klaas Bom of the Erasmus MC and Organon Teknika. The first dual-touch screen portable the "Hyperion ultrasound system" distributed through Graydon Pierce Imaging is designed specifically for the most hostile and demanding medical environments – Military Medical Applications (MEDCOM), Emergency Medical Services, Trauma Centers and Humanitarian Relief Operations. Recently GE has come out with the VScan and Vscan dual probe, which offer almost a micro-ultrasound. Importantly, its price point is such that they can be issued to individual physicians.
Roger Sanders
Dr. Sanders has written over 16 books on Ultrasound & Sonography, including "Clinical Sonography: A Practical Guide", which is now in its fourth edition, and over 150 peer-reviewed articles. He is generally recognized as one of the pioneers of the use of Ultrasound in relation to Obstetrics and Gynecology, and has been recognized for his work with the Biparietal diameter among other work in the field. He is a fellow of several different Societies in the field of Ultrasound, including the Society of Radiology in Ultrasound, the American College of Radiology, and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (the AIUM), the latter awarding him the Presidential Award in 1984, and the Joseph H. Holmes Pioneer Award in 2001.
Science and invention in Birmingham
1896: The first radiograph used to assist in surgery is taken in Birmingham by the British pioneer of medical X-rays, Major John Hall-Edwards thus kick-starting a whole new field of medical science.
Medical ultrasound
The future of contrast ultrasonography is in molecular imaging with potential clinical applications expected in cancer screening to detect malignant tumors at their earliest stage of appearance. Molecular ultrasonography (or ultrasound molecular imaging) uses targeted microbubbles originally designed by Dr Alexander Klibanov in 1997; such targeted microbubbles specifically bind or adhere to tumoral microvessels by targeting biomolecular cancer expression (overexpression of certain biomolecules occurs during neo-angiogenesis or inflammation processes in malignant tumors). As a result, a few minutes after their injection in blood circulation, the targeted microbubbles accumulate in the malignant tumor; facilitating its localization in a unique ultrasound contrast image. In 2013, the very first exploratory clinical trial in humans for prostate cancer was completed at Amsterdam in the Netherlands by Dr Hessel Wijkstra.
Ultrasonic toothbrush
Ultrasound has been used in Medicine for close to half a century and its safety has been studied for almost the same period of time. In 1992, the US FDA first allowed the use of ultrasound at a frequency of 1.6 MHz in a toothbrush. In 1993, the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), in conjunction with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) developed the Output Display Standard (ODS), including the thermal index and mechanical index which have been incorporated into the FDA’s new regulations. These regulations limit the power output of these devices to a level low enough to avoid raising surrounding tissue temperature by more than 1 °C.
Acoustics
The twentieth century saw a burgeoning of technological applications of the large body of scientific knowledge that was by then in place. The first such application was Sabine’s groundbreaking work in architectural acoustics, and many others followed. Underwater acoustics was used for detecting submarines in the first World War. Sound recording and the telephone played important roles in a global transformation of society. Sound measurement and analysis reached new levels of accuracy and sophistication through the use of electronics and computing. The ultrasonic frequency range enabled wholly new kinds of application in medicine and industry. New kinds of transducers (generators and receivers of acoustic energy) were invented and put to use.
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is defined by the American National Standards Institute as "sound at frequencies greater than 20 kHz". In air at atmospheric pressure, ultrasonic waves have wavelengths of 1.9 cm or less.
Ultrasound
A common use of ultrasound is in underwater range finding; this use is also called Sonar. An ultrasonic pulse is generated in a particular direction. If there is an object in the path of this pulse, part or all of the pulse will be reflected back to the transmitter as an echo and can be detected through the receiver path. By measuring the difference in time between the pulse being transmitted and the echo being received, it is possible to determine the distance.
Ultrasound
Power ultrasound in the 20–100 kHz range is used in chemistry. The ultrasound does not interact directly with molecules to induce the chemical change, as its typical wavelength (in the millimeter range) is too long compared to the molecules. Instead, the energy causes cavitation which generates extremes of temperature and pressure in the liquid where the reaction happens. Ultrasound also breaks up solids and removes passivating layers of inert material to give a larger surface area for the reaction to occur over. Both of these effects make the reaction faster. In 2008, Atul Kumar reported synthesis of Hantzsch esters and polyhydroquinoline derivatives via multi-component reaction protocol in aqueous micelles using ultrasound.
Ultrasonic toothbrush
The first ultrasonic toothbrush, initially branded Ultima and later Ultrasonex by Sonex Corporation, was first patented in the USA in 1992 by Robert T. Bock, the same year the FDA gave it approval for daily home use. Initially, the Ultima worked only on ultrasound. A few years later, a motor was added to the Ultrasonex brush, which provided additional sonic vibration. Sonex was then sold to Salton, Inc., who began distributing the product in the USA and many other countries. In 2008, Salton Corporation’s new owners decide to exit the oral hygiene market and since then, several new companies started selling ultrasonic toothbrushes such as the Ultreo, Megasonex, and Emmi-Dent brands. In addition, in late 2012, Robert T. Bock created a new Ultrasonic toothbrush, the Smilex Ultrasonic Toothbrush using updated technology. Today, most ultrasonic toothbrushes simultaneously work in the ultrasonic mode together with sonic vibration. , the only Ultrasonic toothbrushes being marketed are the brands Emmi-Dent, Megasonex and Smilex.
Echocardiography
Recognized as the “Father of Echocardiography”, the Swedish physician Inge Edler (1911-2001), a graduate of Lund University, was the first of his profession to apply ultrasonic pulse echo imaging in diagnosing cardiac disease, which the acoustical physicist Floyd Firestone had developed to detect defects in metal castings. In fact, Dr. Edler in 1953 produced the first echocardiographs using an industrial Firestone-Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope. In developing echocardiography, Edler worked with the physicist Carl Hellmuth Hertz, the son of the Nobel laureate Gustav Hertz and grandnephew of Heinrich Rudolph Hertz.
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is also increasingly being used in trauma and first aid cases, with emergency ultrasound becoming a staple of most EMT response teams. Furthermore, ultrasound is used in remote diagnosis cases where teleconsultation is required, such as scientific experiments in space or mobile sports team diagnosis.
Ultrasound
Ultrasound has been used since the 1940s by physical and occupational therapists for treating connective tissue: ligaments, tendons, and fascia (and also scar tissue). Conditions for which ultrasound may be used for treatment include the follow examples: ligament sprains, muscle strains, tendonitis, joint inflammation, plantar fasciitis, metatarsalgia, facet irritation, impingement syndrome, bursitis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and scar tissue adhesion.
Medical ultrasound
Microbubbles-based contrast media is administrated intravenously in patient blood stream during the medical ultrasonography examination. Thanks to their size, the microbubbles remain confined in blood vessels without extravasating towards the interstitial fluid. An ultrasound contrast media is therefore purely intravascular, making it an ideal agent to image organ microvascularization for diagnostic purposes. A typical clinical use of contrast ultrasonography is detection of a hypervascular metastatic tumor, which exhibits a contrast uptake (kinetics of microbubbles concentration in blood circulation) faster than healthy biological tissue surrounding the tumor. Other clinical applications using contrast exist, such as in echocardiography to improve delineation of left ventricle for visually checking contractibility of heart after a myocardial infarction. Finally, applications in quantitative perfusion (relative measurement of blood flow ) emerge for identifying early patient response to an anti-cancerous drug treatment (methodology and clinical study by Dr Nathalie Lassau in 2011), enabling to determine the best oncological therapeutic options.
Ultrasonography of chronic venous insufficiency of the legs
From the 1960s commercially available systems were introduced. Soon, other advances in electronics and piezoelectric materials enabled further improvements which meant that ultrasound was quickly adopted for use in medicine due to its rapid, accurate diagnostic capabilities which offered the possibility of prompt treatment. Alongside the improving imaging technology, acoustic Doppler velocimetry and medical ultrasonography color Doppler were developed, which have had a significant impact on many specialties, including radiology, obstetrics, gynecology, angiology and cardiology, and have provided even greater scope for ultrasound investigations. Since 1970, real-time scanners and pulsed Doppler, have enabled the use of ultrasound to study the function of the venous system. The first demonstration of color Doppler was achieved by Geoff Stevenson.
Further progress in the 1970s was made with the arrival of the microchip, and the ensuing exponential increase in processing power has meant the development of fast and powerful systems. These systems involving digital beamforming and greater signal enhancement, have introduced new methods of interpreting and displaying data.
Electromagnetic spectrum
In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a new type of radiation emitted during an experiment with an evacuated tube subjected to a high voltage. He called these radiations x-rays and found that they were able to travel through parts of the human body but were reflected or stopped by denser matter such as bones. Before long, many uses were found for them in the field of medicine.
Medical ultrasound
Musculoskeletal ultrasound in used to examine tendons, muscles, nerves, ligaments, soft tissue masses, and bone surfaces. Ultrasound is an alternative to x-ray imaging in detecting fractures of the wrist, elbow and shoulder for patients up to 12 years (Fracture sonography).
Ultrasonography of chronic venous insufficiency of the legs
The use of ultrasonography in a medical application was first used in the late 1940s in the United States. This use was soon followed in other countries with further research and development being carried out. The first report on Doppler ultrasound as a diagnostic tool for vascular disease was published in 1967–1968. Rapid advances since then in electronics, has greatly improved ultrasound transmission tomography.
Ultrasound (band)
Despite the more commercially acceptable developments of their sound, the renamed band was initially no more successful. Following a year of struggling to keep going, Ultrasound released their first single "Same Band" on Fierce Panda in July 1997. It brought them some favourable press in "NME", who described it as "(sounding) like The Who's "Tommy" - in its entirety - squeezed into four-and-a-half minutes... utterly heroic and bizarrely, by some distance, their most understated moment." This led to the band performing in the "NME" sponsored Unsigned Showcase event.
X-ray
The first medical X-ray made in the United States was obtained using a discharge tube of Pulyui's design. In January 1896, on reading of Röntgen's discovery, Frank Austin of Dartmouth College tested all of the discharge tubes in the physics laboratory and found that only the Pulyui tube produced X-rays. This was a result of Pulyui's inclusion of an oblique "target" of mica, used for holding samples of fluorescent material, within the tube. On 3 February 1896 Gilman Frost, professor of medicine at the college, and his brother Edwin Frost, professor of physics, exposed the wrist of Eddie McCarthy, whom Gilman had treated some weeks earlier for a fracture, to the X-rays and collected the resulting image of the broken bone on gelatin photographic plates obtained from Howard Langill, a local photographer also interested in Röntgen's work.
Therapeutic ultrasound
The first large scale application of ultrasound was around World War II. Sonar systems were being built and used to navigate submarines. It was realized that the high intensity ultrasound waves that they were using were heating and killing fish. This led to research in tissue heating and healing effects. Since the 1940s, ultrasound has been used by physical and occupational therapists for therapeutic effects.
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is sound waves with frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hear it. This limit varies from person to person and is approximately 20 kilohertz (20,000 hertz) in healthy young adults. Ultrasound devices operate with frequencies from 20 kHz up to several gigahertz.
Medical ultrasound
After the French physicist Pierre Curie’s discovery of piezoelectricity in 1880, ultrasonic waves could be deliberately generated for industry. Thereafter, in 1940, the American acoustical physicist Floyd Firestone devised the first ultrasonic echo imaging device, the Supersonic Reflectoscope, to detect internal flaws in metal castings. In 1941, the Austrian neurologist Karl Theo Dussik was in collaboration with his brother, Friedreich, a physicist, likely, the first person to ultrasonically echo image the human body, outlining thereby the ventricles of a human brain. Ultrasonic energy was first applied to the human body for medical purposes by Dr George Ludwig at the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland in the late 1940s. English-born physicist John Wild (1914–2009) first used ultrasound to assess the thickness of bowel tissue as early as 1949; he has been described as the "father of medical ultrasound". Subsequent advances in the field took place concurrently in several countries. It was not until 1961 when David Robinson and George Kossoff's work at the Australian Department of Health, resulted in the first commercially practical water path ultrasonic scanner. Then in 1963 Meyerdirk & Wright launched production of the first commercial hand-held articulated arm compound contact B-mode scanner that ultrasound became generally available for medical use.
Ultrasound
The potential for ultrasonic imaging of objects, with a 3 GHZ sound wave producing resolution comparable to an optical image, was recognized by Sokolov in 1939, but techniques of the time produced relatively low-contrast images with poor sensitivity.
Ultrasonic imaging uses frequencies of 2 megahertz and higher; the shorter wavelength allows resolution of small internal details in structures and tissues. The power density is generally less than 1 watt per square centimetre to avoid heating and cavitation effects in the object under examination. High and ultra high ultrasound waves are used in acoustic microscopy, with frequencies up to 4 gigahertz. Ultrasonic imaging applications include industrial nondestructive testing, quality control and medical uses.
History of medicine
X-ray imaging was the first kind of medical imaging, and later ultrasonic imaging, CT scanning, MR scanning and other imaging methods became available.
Radiosurgery
Stereotactic radiosurgery was first developed in 1949 by the Swedish neurosurgeon Lars Leksell to treat small targets in the brain that were not amenable to conventional surgery. The initial stereotactic instrument he conceived used probes and electrodes. The first attempt to supplant the electrodes with radiation was made in the early fifties, with x-rays. The principle of this instrument was to hit the intra-cranial target with narrow beams of radiation from multiple directions. The beam paths converge in the target volume, delivering a lethal cumulative dose of radiation there, while limiting the dose to the adjacent healthy tissue. Ten years later significant progress had been made, due in considerable measure to the contribution of the physicists Kurt Liden and Börje Larsson. At this time, stereotactic proton beams had replaced the x-rays. The heavy particle beam presented as an excellent replacement for the surgical knife, but the synchrocyclotron was too clumsy. Leksell proceeded to develop a practical, compact, precise and simple tool which could be handled by the surgeon himself. In 1968 this resulted in the Gamma Knife, which was installed at the Karolinska Institute and consisted of several cobalt-60 radioactive sources placed in a kind of helmet with central channels for irradiation with gamma rays. This prototype was designed to produce slit-like radiation lesions for functional neurosurgical procedures to treat pain, movement disorders, or behavioral disorders that did not respond to conventional treatment. The success of this first unit led to the construction of a second device, containing 179 cobalt-60 sources. This second Gamma Knife unit was designed to produce spherical lesions to treat brain tumors and intracranial arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). In the 1980s the third and fourth units (with 201 cobalt-60 sources) were installed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Sheffield, England. The fifth Gamma Knife was installed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh in 1987.
Medical ultrasound
Abdominal and endoanal ultrasound are frequently used in gastroenterology and colorectal surgery. In abdominal sonography, the solid organs of the abdomen such as the pancreas, aorta, inferior vena cava, liver, gall bladder, bile ducts, kidneys, and spleen are imaged. However, sound waves are blocked by gas in the bowel and attenuated to differing degrees by fat, sometimes limiting diagnostic capabilities in this area. The appendix can sometimes be seen when inflamed (as in e.g.: appendicitis) and ultrasound is the initial imaging choice, avoiding unnecessary radiation, although it frequently needs to be followed by other imaging methods such as CT. Endoanal ultrasound is used particularly in the investigation of anorectal symptoms such as fecal incontinence or obstructed defecation. It images the immediate perianal anatomy and is able to detect occult defects such as tearing of the anal sphincter. Ultrasonography of liver tumors allows for both detection and characterization.
History of magnetic resonance imaging
The US National Science Foundation notes "The patent included the idea of using NMR to 'scan' the human body to locate cancerous tissue." However, it did not describe a method for generating pictures from such a scan or precisely how such a scan might be done. Meanwhile, Paul Lauterbur at Stony Brook University expanded on Carr's technique and developed a way to generate the first MRI images, in 2D and 3D, using gradients. In 1973, Lauterbur published the first nuclear magnetic resonance image and the first cross-sectional image of a living mouse in January 1974. In the late 1970s, Peter Mansfield, a physicist and professor at the University of Nottingham, England, developed the echo-planar imaging (EPI) technique that would lead to scans taking seconds rather than hours and produce clearer images than Lauterbur had. Damadian, along with Larry Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith, obtained an image of a tumor in the thorax of a mouse in 1976. They also performed the first MRI body scan of a human being on July 3, 1977, studies they published in 1977. In 1979, Richard S. Likes filed a patent on k-space .
During the 1970s a team led by John Mallard built the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen. On 28 August 1980 they used this machine to obtain the first clinically useful image of a patient's internal tissues using MRI, which identified a primary tumour in the patient's chest, an abnormal liver, and secondary cancer in his bones. This machine was later used at St Bartholomew's Hospital, in London, from 1983 to 1993. Mallard and his team are credited for technological advances that led to the widespread introduction of MRI.
Medical ultrasound
In the late 1960s Dr Gene Strandness and the bio-engineering group at the University of Washington conducted research on Doppler ultrasound as a diagnostic tool for vascular disease. Eventually, they developed technologies to use duplex imaging, or Doppler in conjunction with B-mode scanning, to view vascular structures in real-time, while also providing hemodynamic information.
Sex-selective abortion
China launched its first ultrasonography machine in 1979. Chinese health care clinics began introducing ultrasound technologies that could be used to determine prenatal sex in 1982. By 1991, Chinese companies were producing 5,000 ultrasonography machines per year. Almost every rural and urban hospital and family planning clinics in China had a good quality sex discernment equipment by 2001.
Medical ultrasound
Several modes of ultrasound are used in medical imaging. These are:An additional expansion or additional technique of ultrasound is biplanar ultrasound, in which the probe has two 2D planes that are perpendicular to each other, providing more efficient localization and detection. Furthermore, an omniplane probe is one that can rotate 180° to obtain multiple images. In 3D ultrasound, many 2D planes are digitally added together to create a 3-dimensional image of the object.
Klaas Bom
In the 1970s Bom worked on diagnostic ultrasound research. By 1971 he had created a machine that was able to produce a full-view cross-section of a working heart. He also created both the first phased array catheter and the first linear array. Together with the company Organon Teknika his department was also responsible for the development of a portable ultrasound machine in 1976, the Minivisor, which did not became a commercial success. Overall his research group was involved in the areas of echo contrast, intravascular echo catheters and diagnostic ultrasounds in general. During this time Bom also constructed five machines that would be able to display two-dimensional echo's and subsequently distributed these machines around hospitals worldwide.
Ultrasound-guided lumbar puncture
Ultrasound-guided lumbar puncture is a medical procedure used in some emergency departments to obtain cerebrospinal fluid for diagnostic purposes. In contrast to standard lumbar puncture by palpation, the use of ultrasound imaging may reduce the number of failed punctures, needle insertions, and needle redirections. Ultrasound-guided lumbar puncture was first described in Russian medical literature in 1971.
Embryology
Until the birth of modern embryology through observation of the mammalian ovum by von Baer in 1827, there was no clear scientific understanding of embryology. Only in the late 1950s when ultrasound was first used for uterine scanning, was the true developmental chronology of human fetus available.
Obstetric ultrasonography
In 1962, after about two years of work, Joseph Holmes, William Wright, and Ralph Meyerdirk developed the first compound contact B-mode scanner. Their work had been supported by U.S. Public Health Services and the University of Colorado. Wright and Meyerdirk left the university to form Physionic Engineering Inc., which launched the first commercial hand-held articulated arm compound contact B-mode scanner in 1963. This was the start of the most popular design in the history of ultrasound scanners.
Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital
French physician René Laennec invented the stethoscope in 1816 while he was working at the Hôpital Necker. Previously, doctors placed their heads directly on their patient's chest and listened for any irregular sounds to aid in diagnosis. But when a large young woman came to the hospital, he realized that this method would be less effective given her size. Instead, he used a tightly rolled up piece of paper to press against the patient's chest, which made the heartbeat much clearer than ever before. Further experimentation yielded Laennec's famous hollow wooden tube, the forerunner of today's stethoscopes. His invention's ability to magnify the internal sounds of the body advanced the medical practice of auscultation, and proved beneficial to the Hôpital Necker, which had a high fatality rate for Phthisis pulmonalis. This was because Laennec discovered with his stethoscope that patients who developed the disease first displayed a particular irregularity how their voices were manifested within their bodies, thus allowing patients to be diagnosed earlier.
Endoscopic endonasal surgery
Antonin Jean Desomeaux, a urologist from Paris, was the first person to use the term, endoscope.
However, the precursor to the modern endoscope was first invented in the 1800s when a physician in Frankfurt, Germany by the name of Philipp Bozzini, developed a tool to see the inner workings of the body. Bozzini called his invention a Light Conductor, or Lichtleiter in German, and later wrote about his experiments on live patients with this device that consisted of an eyepiece and a container for a candle. Following Bozzini’s success, The University of Vienna starting using the device to test its practicality in other forms of medicine. After Bozzini's device received negative results from live human trials, it had to be discontinued. However, Maximilian Nitze and Joseph Leiter used the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison to make a more refined device similar to modern day endoscopes. This iteration was used for urological procedures, and eventually otolaryngologists began to use Nitze and Leiter's device for eustachian tube manipulation and removal of foreign bodies. The endoscope made its way to the USA when Walter Messerklinger began teaching David Kennedy at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Bioinstrumentation
Biomedical engineering and bioinstrumentation are new terms, but the practice behind them has existed for many generations. Since the beginning of man kind, humans have used what was available to them to treat the medical mishaps they encountered. Biomedical engineering was most developed in the nineteenth century. In the recent years, biomedical engineering has gained popularity and focused on creating solutions for issues in human physiology. Since then, inventions such as X-rays and stethoscopes have progressed and revolutionized the medical field. 
Bioinstrumentation was first developed in earnest by NASA during their early space missions, to gain a better understanding of how humans were affected by space travel. These early bioinstrumentation sensor arrays built by NASA constantly monitored astronauts ECG, respiration, and body temperature; and later measured blood pressure. This allowed physicians to monitor the astronauts vital-signs for potential problems. Data taken from Apollo 15 ECG bioinstrumentation showed periods of cardiac arrhythmia, which physicians and planners used to alter expected workload, diet, and the drugs in the on-board medical kits.
Electrotherapy
The first medical treatments with electricity in London have been recorded as far back as 1767 at Middlesex Hospital in London using a special apparatus. The same was purchased for St. Bartholomew's Hospital only ten years later. The record of uses other than being therapeutic is not clear, however Guy's Hospital has a published list of cases from the earlier 1800s. Golding Bird at Guy's brought electrotherapy into the mainstream in the mid-19th century. In the second half of the 19th century the emphasis moved from delivering large shocks to the whole body to more measured doses, the minimum effective.
Radiation therapy
Medicine has used radiation therapy as a treatment for cancer for more than 100 years, with its earliest roots traced from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. Emil Grubbe of Chicago was possibly the first American physician to use x-rays to treat cancer, beginning in 1896.
History of medicine
In 1954 Joseph Murray, J. Hartwell Harrison and others accomplished the first kidney transplantation. Transplantations of other organs, such as heart, liver and pancreas, were also introduced during the later 20th century. The first partial face transplant was performed in 2005, and the first full one in 2010. By the end of the 20th century, microtechnology had been used to create tiny robotic devices to assist microsurgery using micro-video and fiber-optic cameras to view internal tissues during surgery with minimally invasive practices.
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is the application of ultrasound contrast medium to traditional medical sonography. Ultrasound contrast agents rely on the different ways in which sound waves are reflected from interfaces between substances. This may be the surface of a small air bubble or a more complex structure. Commercially available contrast media are gas-filled microbubbles that are administered intravenously to the systemic circulation. Microbubbles have a high degree of echogenicity (the ability of an object to reflect ultrasound waves). There is a great difference in echogenicity between the gas in the microbubbles and the soft tissue surroundings of the body. Thus, ultrasonic imaging using microbubble contrast agents enhances the ultrasound backscatter, (reflection) of the ultrasound waves, to produce a sonogram with increased contrast due to the high echogenicity difference. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound can be used to image blood perfusion in organs, measure blood flow rate in the heart and other organs, and for other applications.
Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Elsevier on behalf of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. It covers ultrasound technology in clinical diagnostic, interventional and therapeutic applications, including the physics, engineering, and technology of ultrasound in medicine and biology. It was established in 1973. The editor-in-chief is Christy K. Holland (University of Cincinnati) since 2006. The founding editor was Denis N. White, who served from 1973 to 1992 and was succeeded by Peter N. T. Wells.
Ronald Silverman
Dr. Silverman was involved in the development of the use of high-intensity ultrasound for treatment of glaucoma. This project involved direction of an intense focused ultrasound beam at the region of the ciliary body to cause cyclodestruction. This project eventually led to a commercial device (Sonocare, Inc.) manufactured under license by Cornell, and a multicenter clinical trial. Silverman was instrumental in compiling and providing statistical analysis of treatment results from over a thousand patients treated for refractory glaucoma by this device at over 20 centers. The device became the first FDA-approved high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) system. (Several commercial HIFU systems are now in clinical use, although laser techniques based on this groundbreaking effort have supplanted this technique.)
Lars Leksell
The term and concept of radiosurgery were introduced by Leksell already in 1951 when he reasoned that the ‘‘center-of-arc’’ principle and his first stereotactic instrument were suitable for replacing a probe (needle electrode) by cross-firing intracerebral structures with narrow beams of radiant energy. X-rays were first tried but both gamma rays and ultrasonics were included as alternatives.
Ultrasonics (journal)
Ultrasonics is a bimonthly peer reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier and covering research on theory and application of ultrasonics in physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, underwater acoustics, industry, materials characterization, control, and other disciplines. The journal was established in 1963 and the editor-in-chief is A. G. Every (University of the Witwatersrand).