A smartphone that offers ultrasound imaging

WASHINGTON, USA: Merging ultrasound technology with a smartphone, computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis, USA have created a compact, mobile, palm-sized medical imaging device.

William D. Richard, Ph.D., WUSTL associate professor of computer science and engineering, and David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering, have made commercial USB ultrasound probes compatible with Microsoft Windows mobile-based smartphones, thanks to a $100,000 grant Microsoft awarded the two in 2008, said a press release.

In order to make commercial USB ultrasound probes work with smartphones, the researchers had to optimize every aspect of probe design and operation, from power consumption and data transfer rate to image formation algorithms, it added.

As a result, it is now possible to build smartphone compatible with ultrasound probes for imaging the kidney, liver, bladder and eyes, probes for prostate and uterine screenings and biopsies, and vascular probes for imaging veins and arteries for starting intravenous drips.

"You can carry around a probe and cell phone and image on the fly now," said Richard. "Imagine having these smartphones in ambulances and emergency rooms. On a larger scale, this kind of cell phone is a complete computer that runs Windows.”

He said it could become the essential computer of the developing world, where trained medical personnel are scarce, but most of the population, as much as 90 per cent, have access to a cell phone tower.

"Twenty-first century medicine is defined by medical imaging," said Zar. "Yet 70 per cent of the world's population has no access to medical imaging. It's hard to take an MRI or CT scanner to a rural community without power."

Zar said the vision of the new system is to train people in remote areas of the developing world on the basics of gathering data with the phones and sending it to a centralized unit many miles, or half a world away where specialists can analyze the image and make a diagnosis.

Zar wrote the phone software and firmware for the probes; Richard came up with the low-power probe electronics design. Richard and Zar presented the technology at the 2009 World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C, from April 14 to 16.