Stamp-sized stickers to simplify the process of ultrasound scan

Doctors often recommend ultrasound scans to diagnose multiple health conditions affecting vital internal organs, blood vessels, and soft tissues.

Hyderabad: Doctors often recommend ultrasound scans to diagnose multiple health conditions affecting vital internal organs, blood vessels, and soft tissues. It is performed using heavy and specialized equipment available only in diagnostic centers or multispecialty hospitals. Health care professionals have to push those bulky machines and spend almost 20-30 minutes on each patient to complete the process. It is tedious and time-consuming.

So, to overcome such issues, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have developed a patch-sized device (sticker) to simplify the process of performing an ultrasound scan.

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A study, published on July 28, 2002, in the Journal of Science, by engineers from MIT, has shown that the device attached to the skin can produce continuous images of internal body parts for 48 hours.

As a part of the study, researchers attached the ultrasound stickers to the volunteers’ body parts like the chest, neck, abdomen, and other areas. The device captured high-resolution images of internal organs like the heart, lungs, and stomach while they performed normal daily activities.

However, the device is not wireless. It must be connected to an instrument or a transducer. The engineers are currently working on developing a wireless wearable variety.

“We envision a few patches adhered to different locations on the body, and the patches would communicate with your cellphone, where AI algorithms would analyze the images on demand,” study author Xuanhe Zhao said.

“Wearable ultrasound imaging tool would have huge potential in the future of clinical diagnosis. However, the resolution and imaging duration of existing ultrasound patches is relatively low, and they cannot image deep organs,” says another lead author Chonghe Wang.

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One can also use stickers to identify tumors and the health of the baby of a pregnant woman.

Once the technology is entirely developed, anyone can walk into a pharmacy store and access them easily.