The Medical Ultrasonic Metrology Laboratory (Laboratorio de Metrología Ultrasónica Médica) of ITEFI (Instituto de Tecnologías Físicas y de la Información), belonging to CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), has obtained ENAC's accreditation for the power calibration of ultrasound equipment, both for industrial ultrasound patterns and medical equipment in accordance with the international IEC 61161 standard, which sets out the operating requirements and radiation strength balances for measuring ultrasound power. It therefore becomes the first Spanish laboratory and one of the few in the world to offer this service with proven technical competence.

The ultrasound medical applications cover a broad spectrum ranging from therapy, fetal monitoring and diagnostic imaging to measuring blood flow. Since medical ultrasound was first developed there has been a great interest in measuring and characterizing the ultrasonic fields generated in these applications, either for safety reasons or to determine how the equipment operations.

However, despite numerous international standards existing that make it easier to measure medical ultrasonic fields, their complexity means that there are not too many centres in the world with the capacity to perform this task. One of them is the Medical Ultrasonic Laboratory of the ITEFI-CSIC Acoustics Institute that has just been accredited by ENAC, which enables it to demonstrate to its clients its technical competence to carry out this activity.