FUJIFILM Sonosite Brand Guidelines: ATL’s Handheld Spin-Off From Bothell, 1998

From a DARPA-backed project at ATL to a Bothell company.

FUJIFILM Sonosite began as a project inside another company. According to the International Directory of Company Histories (St. James Press, 2004), ATL Ultrasound of Bothell, Washington, started work on the design of a miniaturised diagnostic ultrasound device in 1994. In February 1996 the US Office of Naval Research, under a grant through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), selected ATL as one of a consortium to take the work further; the directory says DARPA wanted a portable device for use on the battlefield or after catastrophic events. Inside ATL the work became the Handheld Systems Business Group, and the directory says the DARPA project was delivered to the US Department of Defense in November 1998, yielding the first portable ultrasound prototype.

On 6 April 1998 that group was spun off as an independent, publicly listed company, SonoSite, Inc. The directory says a cross-licence gave SonoSite exclusive use of certain ATL technology in ultrasound systems weighing 15 pounds or less, while ATL kept the rights for heavier machines. The management came from ATL’s ranks: Kevin M. Goodwin, who had run ATL’s operations in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Australia and Canada, led the new company, with the engineers Blake Little and Juin-Jet Hwang on the technical side. ATL itself later passed to Philips; when The Herald of Everett, Washington, reported on SonoSite in December 2011, it described ATL as “now owned by Philips Healthcare.”

The company started with technology but nothing yet on sale. In May 1998 it received US Food and Drug Administration clearance for its first system, the SonoSite 180, and in September 1999 it began shipping it worldwide, the directory says. English Wikipedia’s article on portable ultrasound dates the SonoSite 180 to 1998 and describes it as the company’s first battery-powered portable. An updated 180PLUS followed in April 2001.

Titan, M-Turbo, Edge, X-Porte, PX.

SonoSite’s first years were spent selling a new idea. The directory says the company began by selling through distributors, including subsidiaries of PSS World Medical that reached physicians’ offices and hospitals, then from late 2000 built its own direct sales force in the United States and opened direct operations in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain. In 2002 it received regulatory approval for an “imaging stethoscope” sold as the iLook, which weighed 2.5 pounds. By mid-2002, the directory says, about 1,000 of the 5,000 hospitals in the United States had bought a SonoSite product, while Business Week in June 2002 called the medical community’s response “moderately enthusiastic.” The company recorded its first profitable quarter at the end of 2002. Fujifilm Sonosite’s chief commercial officer said in July 2026 that the original iLOOK 25 system was launched in 2003.

English Wikipedia lists the generations that followed: the Titan, MicroMaxx, M-Turbo, Edge, X-Porte, SII and PX systems. It says the SonoSite SII, introduced in 2017, used the company’s DirectClear transducer technology, and that the Sonosite PX followed in 2020 with a redesigned workflow and a new family of transducers. The machines are designed to be used at the patient’s bedside rather than in a radiology department, in specialties such as emergency medicine, anaesthesiology, critical care and vascular access, the encyclopedia says. In 2011 the company said its devices were used in more than 20 clinical specialties.

The company has stayed in that point-of-care field. In 2025 it introduced PIV Assist, software using artificial intelligence that is intended to assist clinicians with ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous access, according to Wikipedia. In July 2026 Imaging Technology News reported the launch of a new Sonosite iLOOK, a compact system dedicated to vascular access, with a wireless linear transducer weighing about 170 grams, mounting options and a charging dock with status lights; the company described it as a complement to its broader point-of-care range. It also runs Sonosite Institute, which offers training material on ultrasound-guided techniques.

How imaging makers present themselves.

Ultrasound and medical imaging makers sell to a small, expert audience, and their brands are built to be read in clinical rooms rather than shop windows. A typical ultrasound system is a grey and white console on wheels, parked beside a hospital bed, with a touch panel, a keyboard of controls and a row of probes hanging from its side. The maker’s name usually sits small on the front or the monitor frame; the shape, the colour of the plastics and the layout of the controls do much of the brand’s work.

The screen matters as much as the shell. Scan screens are typically dark and blue-grey, with the greyscale image at the centre, and makers give their measurement tools, presets and assistant features their own product names. Newer handheld scanners shrink the console to a single probe that connects to a phone or tablet, so the app becomes the visible face of the brand.

Larger imaging equipment, such as X-ray, CT, MRI and mammography systems, lives in radiology suites, where the machine is often a white ring or open frame in a quiet room. Here the brand appears on the gantry, in the room’s lighting and on the operator console next door. Several makers in this guide build dedicated or open MRI and digital radiography alongside ultrasound.

Much of this branding is shown first at trade fairs. The annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago and the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) are where makers launch systems, stage booths and present new software, and both Samsung and Esaote have used them for product introductions. Ownership also changes often in this field: brands pass between state groups, investors and larger industrial companies while keeping their names.

A Bothell company inside a Japanese imaging group.

SonoSite stayed independent for 13 years. On 15 December 2011 Fujifilm announced that it would acquire the company; The Herald reported the next day that SonoSite would remain in Bothell under its existing management, and quoted Fujifilm as saying the deal would bring together its imaging technologies with SonoSite’s point-of-care expertise and miniaturisation. The paper noted that Fujifilm’s involvement in health care began with the sale of X-ray film in 1936. English Wikipedia says the acquisition was completed in March 2012, making SonoSite a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings.

Today the company trades as FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc., still headquartered in Bothell, and Wikipedia describes it as a developer and manufacturer of point-of-care ultrasound systems, transducers and related imaging technology. The parent’s name now stands in capitals in front of the older one, and the second word is written Sonosite where the 1998 company wrote SonoSite. In July 2026 its president and chief executive was Masaharu Fukumoto, Imaging Technology News reported.

For a design guide, FUJIFILM Sonosite shows how an imaging brand can be built around a place of use, the bedside, rather than a hospital department. Compare Fujifilm, its parent, and Butterfly Network, another maker of portable ultrasound. For this guide we use a deep teal, graphite, blue-grey and a coral accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep FUJIFILM Sonosite’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.