Dr. Joseph Holmes met with Dr. John Aides and Dr. Carrie Chapman in Los Angeles in 1964 to discuss the membership of the AIUM and decided to include all diagnostic and therapeutic users of ultrasound in medicine into the Institute. Dr. Chapman, then president of the AIUM, officially proclaimed the re-organization of the Institute in her speech at the 9th Annual Meeting in Boston......

In 1967, Dr. Willaim Fry, then president of the AIUM again encouraged further expansion of the AIUM to include technologist, physicists and engineers as well as physicians.......

The following excerpt came from a letter by Dr. Aldes, who was the first secretary-treasurer of AIUM, elected in 1952 and who became Executive Director of the organization in 1963, to Dr. Joseph Holmes, on May 11, 1965. Aides discussed changes necessary to combine professionals working in therapeutic ultrasound and those working with diagnostic and other applications of ultrasound into one organization:

"In the suggested revision, presented by the Committee-inCharge to the members at the meeting in Boston last August, membership was extended to include the following types: (a) Active, (b) Honorary, and (c) Corresponding. Active membership, as you know, is open to physicians, surgeons, Ph.D.'s, and M.A.'s, or their equivalents, who use ultrasound clinically or surgically in their practice, or in the diagnostic or research fields. This is also open to the group using ultrasonic energy for testing purposes in medicine or industry. Honorary and Corresponding memberships are accorded mainly to participants from foreign countries....... As we all know, the use of ultrasonic energy as a therapeutic tool is really just coming into its own in the United States, and in the foreign countries as well, including Germany, where the original work in ultrasound was done. Likewise, the use of ultrasound as a diagnostic tool is still in its infancy. However, both areas hold unlimited promise for ever greater progress....... Personally, I feel that unification of the two groups, the diagnostic and the therapeutic units, would provide greater impetus for ever widening uses of ultrasonic energy, diagnostically, therapeutically, and in research."

Excerpted from the AIUM publication "A History of AIUM" by Dr. Joseph H. Holmes, 1980, updated by Dr. Horace Thompson in 1984.

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