Originally, Centers of Excellence (COEs) were a project of the Word Health Organization (WHO).
Harald Østensen, former medical officer at WHO, had the idea to establish centers for education in basic radiology for developing countries; one center in each continent of the world.
He started this project in the late nineties and founded the “Global Steering Group for Education and Training in Diagnostic Imaging”, chaired by WHO, to discuss the projects of several organizations in this field and to improve the cooperation.
At the same time, WFUMB and WHO started a closer cooperation, initiated by Barry Goldberg. Harald Østensen stressed his special interest for the promotion of ultrasound in developing countries.
Based on the discussions between H. Østensen and H. Lutz, it was agreed that the centers for ultrasound should be funded separately from the centers for basic radiology and fall under the responsibility of WFUMB.
WFUMB funds the COEs in cooperation with its regional member-organization and based on a formal contract with the national societies for ultrasound.