Ultrasound Awareness Month – October 2024

History of Ultrasound Awareness Month

Today, we often head out to hospitals for ultrasounds when we suspect pregnancy or aim to detect a cyst. However, the facility we have today was formulated after years of research and experimentation. Can you believe the first written document discussing the use of these waves involves navigating flying bats? The experiment took place in 1794 by Italian physicist Lazaro Spallanzani.

Then came the mission of producing sound waves of high frequencies. Galton in 1880, managed to produce sound waves of a 40-hertz frequency. That very year, the brothers Jacques and Pierre Curie realized that electricity could be created in a crystal of quartz. This experimentation elevated to the next step during WWI when the French government began innovating high-frequency sound waves to find German submarines. These studies were used by the U.S. Navy to develop SONAR (Sound Navigation And Ranging).

Ultrasound was still being used on waves and the utilization of the machine for healthcare was a non-existent idea. In 1928, a Soviet physicist pitched the idea of using ultrasound on metal structures. From there on, efforts were made to redefine the uses of the ultrasound machine. From 1947 to 1948, a technique where ultrasound was used to visualize the cerebral ventricles, was introduced to visualize the cerebral ventricles. Known as ‘hyper phonography,’ the technique was introduced by Karl Dussik, an Austrian physician, and his brother Frederick. However, the real breakthrough was made when George Ludwig carried out research into gallstones embedded in soft tissues in 1949. He was working at the Naval Military Research Institute, in the United States.