ABSTRACT
The first applications of ultrasound (US) took place in the Navy during World War I, and they were used to navigate and measure distances. Soon after, US began to be used to detect defects in metals and casting alloys, and significant developments in US technologies took place during World War II. Experimentations with US in medical and food applications started at the start of the twentieth century, with the lethal effect of US on some microorganisms being discovered by Harvey and Loomis (1929). 4The work of Karl T. Dussik, a neurologist-psychiatrist at the University of Vienna, on the application of US in medicine resulted in the first use of reflectoscope to detect brain tumors in 1942 (Dussik 1942). Since then, studies on the diagnostic capabilities of US and their effects on biological tissues have developed intensively (Ludwig 1950; Wild 1950; Nolting & Neppiras 1951; Ballantine et al. 1954; Kinsloe et al. 1954; Thornley 1955; Davies 1959; Stouffer 1959). At the start of the 1940s, research on the use of low-energy US in the meat industry started. Initially, the technology was used as a nondestructive tool for assessing the quality of carcasses (Wild 1950; Stouffer 1959; Miles et al. 1987; Whittaker et al. 1992). The basis for evaluation was the speed of sound wave propagation in the meat, which is different in the case of lean and fat tissues. New applications of low-power ultrasound (LPU) in the meat industry were developed in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when the assessments of intramuscular fat content or basic chemical composition were investigated.
