In 1958, a seminal article that launched the widespread use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis was published in The Lancet by Ian Donald, an English physician. After a few years developing the experimental use of ultrasound, Donald had applied it to treat patients in his hospital. In the Lancet article, Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound, he described how he was able to make the life-saving diagnosis of a huge, easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others as having inoperable stomach cancer. Donald knew about sonar from his service in WW II, and industrial use of reflected ultrasound waves for flaw detection in materials, and with help from others, he launched its use in medicine
