Rendering Ultrasonic Imagery: The Sonic Flashlight

Effugas writes: "Fark pointed me at this brilliantly elegant new invention, the Sonic Flashlight. From the curious workshop of George Stetten, an ultrasonic scan of the inside of a patient's body is visually overlaid perceptually within the body being scanned, with no requirement for special glasses, viewing angles, or even particularly exotic hardware. How? Form a triangle with an ultrasound platform and its output display--then bisect the triangle with a half transparent(see the body below), half reflective(see the display above) pane of glass. Since the angles match, the two images merge to provide a perfectly placed synthesis of reality and its augmentation, irrespective of viewer position. Watch the video here for a demonstration; note the hand held variant at the bottom of the page as well. Slick!"

Comments

Very nice , especially the hand-held unit

[spineboy]

This might catch on, for a couple of reasons
-placing IV lines in overly-nutrified people (ie. obese).
-hitting abscesses to drain and/or culture them in our lovely skin-popping junky population.

But other than that, most surgeons (me) and radiologist have developed accurate visual-spatial skills so that we can translate what we see in the remote monitor to what we are doing with our hands. I'm pretty sure that the veins present on the ultrasound image of that guys hand would easily be visable with my naked eyes or palpable (ie using my fingers to feel where it is) easily.
Ultrasound currently only has several uses in most hospital settings - looking at fetuses, looking for blood clots, gall bladders and a couple of other things. The information gained is usually poor at best - limited by the poor-quality information that is inherant in an ultrasound image. For things that really matter a CT or MRI is used.

being careful

[Alien54]

There were reports that a suffciently young unborn child can hear the ultrasound, as seen by reactions in the womb.

Since these things are loud, it would sort of be the the equivalent of suddenly being in side a noisy train station. There has been concern expressed about possible damage

So while ultrasound is very cool, there are some times when it needs to be used with care.

Too many links

[Lazaru5]

Submitters: Please Please Please stop linking every word and phrase. It took me 5 tries before I found the actual page that text in the submission (above and below, etc) came from.