AMUM 2004

Conference welcome and background

The first international conference on Advanced Metrology for Medical Ultrasound which was held on 27-28 April 2004 at NPL, Teddington, England.

AMUM 2004, organised in association with Precision Acoustics Limited, is a unique opportunity for the world's ultrasound experts from medicine, industry and academia to explore the substantial measurement challenges presented by new and future clinical ultrasound equipment. This conference provides a framework for the development of measurement methods to meet these challenges over the next decade.

Ultrasound in medicine has had an impressive first 40 years. Go in to almost any hospital in the world and you will find a host of essential equipment which uses ultrasound for diagnosis, monitoring or therapy. Even the familiar imaging scanners, fetal monitors, intravascular probes, physiotherapy equipment and lithotripters have moved on and now make use of advanced materials and wave physics borrowed from radar and astronomy. There are also many emerging new applications such as High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Surgery, bone healing and the therapeutic use of ultrasound contrast agents.

These advances make new demands on existing measurement equipment in terms of accuracy, speed and even the type of quantity to be measured. Successfully meeting these metrological demands presents a substantial challenge to the scientific community but doing so will allow these new applications to reach their full potential and make future developments easier. Reliable and accurate measurement methods are also essential for ensuring that ultrasound's reputation for clinical safety can be maintained in the face of all these new advances.

In the last 25 years NPL has played a key role in the rapid advance of medical ultrasound by developing and producing specialist measurement equipment and calibrating much of the commercially available measurement equipment - such as membrane hydrophones and radiation force balances - which is now routinely used around the world.

As an indication of the continuity of NPL, it is appropriate that we have chosen Henry VIII's sixteenth century palace of Hampton Court for our conference dinner. NPL was actually established in 1900 in an enclave of Bushy Park, which formed part of the hunting grounds of Hampton Court. This original site is still part of NPL and, after six hundred years, there are still deer in the Park.

Adam Shaw
Chair, Scientific Committee