You will soon no longer need a large device for a medical ultrasound. A newly developed sticker the size of a postage stamp is then all that is needed to visualize the heart, lungs or other organs.
For example, making a pregnancy ultrasound starts with a thick, cold blob of gel on the pregnant belly. Then the doctor places or sonographer on it a kind of rod, the probe, which sends inaudible sound waves into the body. These waves bounce off the soft tissue and fluids within. The rod captures the reflected sound waves and sends them to a computer that converts the information into a grainy black-and-white picture of the fetus, from which the specialist can read how the pregnancy is progressing.
Prolonged echo
Ultrasound is a common and safe way to view the inside of a body. While it works great, the required device is large and clunky. Also, handling the probe and interpreting the grainy black-and-white images is specialist work.
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Operation is usually done by hand. If you want to study an organ for a longer period of time, you need a kind of robotic arm that keeps the probe in the right place. With such a long ultrasound, new gel must also be regularly applied when the old one has dried. The gel is needed because ultrasound doesn’t work with the slightest bit of air between probe and skin.
ultrasound sticker
Researchers at MIT University of Technology in the United States hope to simplify ultrasound by drastically reducing the size of the equipment. In a publication in the journal Science they present the design of an ultrasound sticker measuring two by two centimeters, the size of a postage stamp.
The adhesive layer of the sticker consists of two layers stretchable elastomer, with a hydrogel in between. The lower elastomer sticks to the skin, and the upper one contains the device that emits and receives the sound waves. The whole is about three millimeters thick. The hydrogel consists largely of water and therefore allows sound waves to pass through well. The elastomers prevent the gel from drying out.
48 hours
The researchers tested the stickers with the help of healthy subjects who, for example, wore the device on their neck or on their chest, stomach or arm. While wearing the subjects, the subjects performed various activities, such as jogging and lifting weights. The stickers adhered well to the skin. They provided clear 2D images for 48 hours, showing changes in the blood vessels, heart and even muscles during exercise.
The tested version of the sticker is still attached by wires to the equipment that converts the reflected sound waves into images. In this form, the device already has a useful application. For example, just like the EKG stickers that patients are now given for heart monitoring, they could be used for continuous monitoring of organs, or for measuring brain blood flow during anaesthesia.
wireless
But the goal of the researchers is to make the system wireless, so that the patient does not have to go to a clinic. They also want to develop software based on artificial intelligence to better interpret the images sent by the sticker. Then you could also read the ultrasound that the sticker makes at home, in order to follow the development of a fetus. The stickers could also discreetly measure the bladder contents of people with urinary tract problems.
However, significant improvements are still needed before the sticker can make clear and practically usable 3D images. “We imagine a box of different stickers, each designed to depict a different part of the body,” say MIT researcher Xuanhe Zhao. “We believe this represents a breakthrough in wearable devices and medical imaging.”