Pionners; Dussik, Donald, Brown, Wild, Reid

 Ultrasound was first introduced in the practice of medicine approximately 90 years ago when Theodore Dussik and his brother Friederich attempted to use ultrasound to diagnose brain tumors.  In the ensuing time, ultrasound has become an important diagnostic modality in medicine.

Karl Theo Dussik (1908-1962) was born in Vienna, Austria and graduated from the University of Vienna Medical school where he worked as neurologist and psychiatrist.  Because of the difficulty in the diagnosis of brain tumors, Dussik, in 1937 started exploring the visualizatn of intracranial structures such as the ventricles with ultrasound. In 1945, Dussik together with his brother Friedrich constructed an apparatus and was able to visualise the brain and the ventricles. In 1947 he published his findings and thus is considered the "father of ultrasonic diagnosis" 

Ian Donald (1910-1987) was a Scottish physician who pioneered the use of ultrasound in obstetrics and gynecology. Donald graduated from the University of London in 1930.  During WWII he was drafted into the Royal Air Force during which time he developed an interest in radar and sonar.  After the war he became a Professor at Glasgow University where he explored the use of ultrasound in obstetrics in 1950 in collaboration with John MacVicar and Tom Brown an industrial engineer.  They developed the first compact contact ultrasound and were able to obtain an ultrasound image of a fetus. 

John J Wild (1914-2009) was an English-born American physician who received his medical degree from Cambridge in 1942 an immigrated to the United States in 1946 when he became a faculty at the University of Minnesota. Wild used ultrasound for body imaging notably for diagnosing cancer.  Modern ultrasonic medical scanners are descendants of the equipment Wild and his colleagues developed in 1950s.  In 1951 he and Dr. John Reid gained access to a unit that operated at the 15 MHz range, providing the detail needed to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissues.  They were able to scan the breast and make the diagnosis of tumors by noninvasive means.  Reid and Wild developed tools for scanning the vaginal and rectal tissues.  Their work was published in the journal The Lancet in 1951 and in Science in 1952. They were credited as the first to develop equipment specifically designed for breast scanning and were able to differentiate between cystic and solid masses in the breast by means of ultrasonography. 

In the last 50 years due to technological advances, ultrasound units have changed from large machines to small user-friendly and sophisticated instruments.  Such evolution required contributions from the fields of physics, medicine and engineering.  Today ultrasound units are the sine qua non in the diagnosis of cardiac, abdominal musculoskeletal diseases and are also used in the guidance of interventional procedures. 

The post above is dedicated to Dr Nicholas Zannes who performed an ultrasound study on me recently for which I thank him. His contributions in radiology especially in the field of interventional radiology are noteworthy and help established the subspecialty in Greece.  In addition to being a good colleague I also thank him for being a good friend to me and my family for the past 50 years.