débit sanguin" ("doppler effect and measure of the blood flow"), the basis of his design of a doppler flow meter in 1967. scotland parallel developments in glasgow, scotland by professor ian donald and colleagues at the glasgow royal maternity hospital (grmh) led to the first diagnostic applications of the technique. donald was an obstetrician with a self-confessed "childish interest in machines, electronic and otherwise", who, having treated the wife of one of the company's directors, was invited to visit the research department of boilermakers babcock & wilcox at renfrew. he adapted their industrial ultrasound equipment to conduct experiments on various morbid anatomical specimens and assess their ultrasonic characteristics. together with the medical physicist tom brown. and fellow obstetrician john macvicar, donald refined the equipment to enable differentiation of pathology in live volunteer patients. these findings were reported in the lancet on 7 june 1958 as "investigation of abdominal masses by pulsed ultrasound" – possibly one of the most important papers published in the field of diagnostic medical imaging. at grmh, professor donald and james willocks then refined their techniques to obstetric applications including fetal head measurement to assess the size and growth of the fetus. with the opening of the new queen mother's hospital in yorkhill in 1964, it became possible to improve these methods even further. stuart campbell's pioneering work on fetal cephalometry led to it acquiring long-term status as the definitive method of study of foetal growth. as the technical quality of the scans was further developed, it soon became possible to study pregnancy from start to finish and diagnose its many complications such as multiple pregnancy, fetal abnormality and placenta praevia. diagnostic ultrasound has since been imported into practically every other area of medicine. sweden medical ultrasonography was used in 1953 at lund university by cardiologist inge edler and gustav ludwig hertz's son carl hellmuth hertz, who was then a graduate student at the university's department of nuclear physics. edler had asked hertz if it was possible to use radar to look into the body, but hertz said this was impossible. however, he said, it might be possible to use ultrasonography. hertz was familiar with using ultrasonic reflectoscopes of the american acoustical physicist floyd firestone's invention for nondestructive materials testing, and together edler and hertz developed the idea of applying this methodology in medicine. the first successful measurement of heart activity was made on october 29, 1953, using a device borrowed from the ship construction company kockums in malmö. on december 16 the same year, the method was applied to generate an echo-encephalogram (ultrasonic probe of the brain). edler and hertz published their findings in 1954. united states 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. in the late 1960s 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. 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. manufacturers major manufacturers of medical ultrasound devices and equipment are: canon medical systems corporation esaote ge healthcare hitachi ltd. mindray medical international limited koninklijke philips n.v. samsung medison siemens healthineers