Are we there yet?
My studies in medical imaging at the New York Radiological Institute went well and although I learned anatomy and imaging of the entire body, including fetus scanning, I decided to specialize in the heart. The school was affiliated with the two teaching hospitals in Manhattan- Columbia Presbyterian and Mount Sinai and I was able to learn echocardiography from leading cardiologists. The technology was at its early development phase and had not yet evolved. For example, these two hospitals only used an ultrasonic technique called“ M-Mode” a precursor to the more advanced technology that visualized the heart muscle. Only one hospital had a prototype ultrasound unit that was a bit more advanced than that, which was at the Bronx VA hospital and fortunately I was able to see this first hand.
Just prior to receiving my diploma, I was able to get an interview for an educational specialist at a leading ultrasound equipment company in Mahwah New Jersey called Irex. This company was number 1 worldwide
Old Building Reflection, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Photo by Barry Epstein
for its M-Mode medical devices and after years of research and development were about to launch a new technology. The new medical device was capable of looking at the beating heart at structures as small as 2 millimeters and recording a grey scale image of the heart on video tape. Although there was technology out in the market at the time, this new device was clearly the best. The highly advanced instrumentation was capable of looking at the blood flow and determining its direction and velocity. This feature combined with imaging was called Doppler Echocardiography and was the only device in the world with this capability. After seeing this technology first hand, my interviewers at Irex, thought that I was the man for the job of pioneering the education department tasked with
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