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December 1, 2008

Ultrasound History
By Beth W.

Orenstein
Radiology Today
Vol. 9 No. 24 P. 28

Joan Baker delivers the McLaughlin Lecture at the 2008 SDMS Conference.

Manufacturers now make ultrasound equipment that is so compact, it can be carried to patients on battlefields or used by astronauts in space.

But it wasn’t always that way, noted Joan Baker, MSR, RDMS, RDCS, FSDMS, who was introduced at this year’s annual Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS) conference as its “matriarch.” Baker delivered the third annual Stephen McLaughlin Memorial Lecture at the conference held in mid-October, with more than 1,400 sonographers attending.

McLaughlin, a former SDMS president, died in January 2005 from brain cancer.

Baker, who is president of Sound Ergonomics in Kenmore, Wash., spoke about the evolution of sonography and how it developed from a few pioneers to a profession with tens o