Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have joined commercial USB-based ultrasound probes with smartphones to create portable devices that could play a key medical role in remote areas of the developing world as well as in the military field. The devices could be used to scan everthing from kidneys to prostates.
“You can carry around a probe and cell phone and image on the fly now,” said William D. Richard, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and engineering, in a statement. “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. 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 percent, have access to a cell phone tower.”
The effort, funded by a $100,000 Microsoft grant, is especially promising from a cost perspective: portable probes sell for less than $2,000 vs. typical portable ultrasound devices that are priced closer to $30,000, according to the researchers.
The researchers reworked commercially available portable probes, making them more power efficient and enabling them to transfer data and digest images. The idea would be to train people in remote areas to gather medical information via the devices and send it to a central unit miles and even countries away for expert analysis.
