Review of the Development of Ultrasonic Doppler Flowmeter

Abstract

Application of the ultrasonic Doppler method to medical diagnosis was first made in 1955 by Shigeo Satomura. At first he measured the small vibration and motion of the human body in the heart, the eye ball and blood vessels by the Doppler method with microwave and ultrasound. Accidentally in 1958 Satomura found Doppler noise of the blood stream in the process of measuring the microvibration of the blood vessel wall. The next clinical application of this ultrasonic flowmeter was developed by Satomura and Kaneko. Descriptions of the first report at the Society of Acoustics and medical meeting, the first paper in Japanese and English, the first equipment, recording system, the first commercial Doppler flowmeter, the naming of the ultrasonic blood rheograph and further studies on cerebral circulation were also provided in this paper.