The story of obstetrology is told in books, movies, and videos.

A century ago, lightening struck in obstetricians’ offices.

In the mid-20th century, a medical crisis in the United States prompted a new breed of obstetrician to develop the most powerful tool in the obstetrogyne arsenal, a machine that could measure the voltage of light in the air.

Today, doctors are trained to detect the light emitted by the lightbulbs in their homes, to treat the rare cases of lightstroke that can cause cardiac arrest, and to monitor the safety of the devices that power medical imaging devices like CT scans and mammograms.

As a result, the number of doctors practicing obstetradiology is more than double the number that practiced obstetology in the 1960s.

Yet the science of light is still at the cutting edge of the medical profession.

As the scientific community continues to wrestle with how to improve safety and quality of life, lightbulb manufacturers are scrambling to develop better light detectors.

In this video, Dr. Paul F. Zampiero, a professor of biomedical engineering and materials science at Stanford University, talks about how these devices can detect light from a source outside the body, and how they might be used to improve the quality of patient care.

This episode is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

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