Translating a prototype into a commercial medical ultrasound device
Page date: Published 8 Mar 2023; updated 21 Sep 2026. 6 min read.
The article follows engineer Kjell Kristoffersen’s work on bringing Bjørn Angelsen’s Pulsed Echo Doppler Flowmeter (PEDOF), an ultrasound tool for measuring blood flow, from laboratory prototypes toward commercial medical equipment. In summer 1976, Kristoffersen and four other students built ten prototype units at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The article says he later worked on follow-up devices and joined startup Vingmed, eventually becoming chief engineer at GE Ultrasound.
In 1980–81, Angelsen’s SINTEF group, including Kristoffersen and funded by Vingmed, found PEDOF difficult to use alone. The team integrated its Doppler technology with an IREX B-mode imaging scanner, which Kristoffersen identifies as a commercial breakthrough for cardiac Doppler ultrasound. Vingmed then decided to develop its own scanner with imaging, Doppler measurement and colour Doppler. It launched the CFM 700 in 1986, which the article calls the first annular-array colour-flow imaging system. The story notes that converting prototypes to reliable industrial products took several years, initially limiting growth, particularly in the US.
Kristoffersen’s group later developed digital scanners in Høvik. Its System 5 was described as the world’s second digital cardiology ultrasound scanner and received the EU Commission’s 1995 Information Technology Award for an innovative IT product. The article credits digital technology with helping Vingmed survive and grow; GE acquired the company in 1998. It says Vingmed progressed from two-to-four-channel mechanical scanners to 128-channel phased-array technology.
The article quotes an ultrasound-market estimate of USD 600 million in 1982 and more than USD 8 billion about 40 years later, calculating 6.7% average annual growth. This is a historical estimate cited to Allied Market Research, rather than a current market figure. The article was written by Leah Anderson on behalf of EXACT-Therapeutics, Innovation Norway, Norway Health Tech, Investinor and NTNU’s Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions; it is part of a series on Norwegian ultrasound innovation. Related links: Health and life science; NTNU; GE Healthcare; SINTEF; the Norwegian ultrasound innovation series.