The history of ultrasound began with
Spallanzani's experiments on bats, where he found they relied on sound for
navigation1. In 1938, Harvard
students Griffin and Galambos introduced the term "echolocation" to
describe how bats use high-frequency clicks to locate objects by bouncing off
surfaces and analyzing echoes.
1. Lazzaro
Spallanzani (1729–1799)
In 1826, physicists Jean-Daniel Colladon and Jacques Sturm demonstrated that sound travels faster in water than in air2. Their experiment involved two boats 10 miles apart, one with an underwater bell and the other with a trumpet-like instrument. By timing the sound's journey between the boats, they calculated the speed of sound in water as 1435 m/sec, close to the modern standard of 1482 m/sec.
2.
Colladon and his assistant, Sturm, calculate the speed of sound in water.
The Doppler effect, discovered by Christian Doppler in 1842, explains how changes in wave frequency affect the colors of stars and sound from moving sources. Dutch mathematician Ballot demonstrated this principle using a train experiment. When an object producing sound moves towards or away from an observer, the frequencies heard change accordingly.
3.
Christian Doppler (1803–1853)
Piezoelectricity, discovered by Jacques and Pierre Curie, involves crystals generating electricity under pressure. The Curies found that applying a voltage to certain crystals can produce pressure waves. This property enabled the development of transducer technology. Following the Titanic sinking in 1912, Reginald Fessenden pioneered an ultrasound-based collision avoidance system using sound waves generated by an underwater device4. Despite detecting icebergs up to 2 miles away, continuous echoes interfered with its functionality for commercial iceberg avoidance. This innovation laid the foundation for modern ultrasound technology.
4.
Reginald Fessenden (1866–1932) and the Fessenden oscillator.
During World War I, Paul Langevin, a French physicist, developed a
quartz-based hydrophone using piezoelectricity to detect enemy submarines. This
technology was crucial for protecting ships and evolved into sonar during World
War II, improving the capability to locate submerged threats.
SY Sokolov, a Soviet physicist, introduced the idea of using
ultrasound to detect flaws in metal structures in 1928. Ultrasound was
initially used in industry before it was adopted in clinical medicine. Early
industrial sonographic methods involved "through transmission," where
a receiver on the opposite side of the material from the transmitter captured
sound waves passing through the material, creating shadows that could be
analyzed.
During
the 1940s, researchers in England and the US developed reflective techniques
for ultrasound transmission. Donald Sproule in England created a system where
the receiver was a separate device collecting waves bounced off the material.
In the US, Floyd Firestone received a patent in 1944 for the Reflectoscope, the
first system where the same transducer generated and detected ultrasound waves
in the time between transmitted pulses.
In
1947-1948, Karl Dussik and his brother introduced hyperphonography, using
ultrasound to visualize cerebral ventricles. However, W Guttner revealed that
the images actually showed densities of the skull, not the ventricles as
believed.
In 1949, George Ludwig conducted groundbreaking research on
gallstones embedded in soft tissues using ultrasonic waves at the Naval
Military Research Institute in the United States. His work laid the groundwork
for the successful application of ultrasound in medical practice. Ian Donald
furthered this progress in 1956 by introducing ultrasound for diagnostic
purposes, initially using the one-dimensional A-mode to measure the fetal head
diameter. Later, Donald and Brown showcased an ultrasound image of a female
genital tumor, with Brown's invention of the "two-dimensional compound
scanner" marking a significant advancement in tissue visualization.
Ultrasound technology evolved over the years, with the introduction of B-mode
devices in 1963 for two-dimensional imaging, followed by the introduction of
the "grey scale" in the mid-seventies, enabling real-time ultrasound
scanning. In the late eighties, the Doppler effect was leveraged to create
color flow Doppler ultrasound devices for visualizing blood circulation.
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References
Kaproth-Joslin, K. A., Nicola, R., & Dogra, V. S. (2015). The history of US: From bats and boats to the bedside and Beyond: RSNA Centennial Article. RadioGraphics, 35(3), 960-970. doi:10.1148/rg.2015140300
Nadrljanski, M. M.
(2024, February 17). History of ultrasound in medicine. Retrieved from
https://radiopaedia.org/articles/history-of-ultrasound-in-medicine
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