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.