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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!"
One of the definition of genius is the ability to take existing ideas and put them together in a new way that hadn't been previously thought of. In one sense, that exactly what this does. There isn't any major leap here; it's not a tricorder or real x-ray specs. But it is a fundamentally new way of working, and that's the genius.
There are unsafe levels of x-ray radation that one is not supposed to be exposed to over the course of one's life. Many chronically ill people bump into that limit. Depending on the clinical effectiveness of this, the sonic flashlight could become the x-ray machine's safer, cheaper brother, although my guess is that, like MRI or CT scans, it will augment rather than replace many of the imaging methods currently in use.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
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.
..........FULL STOP.
In most medical uses, it's important to be able to change the angle at which the ultrasound image is taken. Like CAT scans, ultrasound takes images of anatomy in slices. It's generally required that certain views to visualize a certain grouping of structures is desired, and one needs to be able to get those pictures quickly at various angles. For that, the handheld transducer as used is still going to be more useful than this invention. For something like this invention, you'd have to turn the whole patient or extremity to obtain a different angle due to size of the glass panel and transducer. Not practical as it's currently implemented for most medical applications.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Can a larger version of this be used to detect hidden weapons on people that are fully clothed? I guess we would have the person stand with their back to the wall then lower one of these "screens" to sort of sandwich the person between the screen and wall and we would then see if they are hiding a weapon? Why would it not work?
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 91639
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As a prosthetist/orthotist, I think this would be useful for realtime viewing and testing of soft tissue injuries. From the description given it would allow manipulation and viewing to occur at the same time, and hence allow for possible viewing of rupture of joint capsules, or other pathologies where a MRI may be too cost prohibitive.
But time will tell how clinically useful this device is. If more people could develop realtime 3D medical imaging, it might allow further quantification of clinical skills.
OK, time for sleep now.....
Sonic images are old hat. I remember Sega invented a device in the early 90's that could render a full-color sonic hedgehog.
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For one, I don't see anyone performing a medical procedure, even as simple as inserting a needle, while trying to hold this thing at proper angle a the same time. Also, can you imagine trying the contorting needed should a doctor want to take look at some part of the body from the side. That said, here is a suggestion.
Instead of using the "HUD" approach, why not project the image on the body from an independent source while being able to leave the probe on a secured arm. First, data acquisition should not be very hard. Attach the ultrasound probe to an arm that can measure the rotation of joints (such as these), or use four receivers and two transmitters attached to the probe (just like GPS) to determine the position and orientation of the probe. Quick linear transform on the acquired image and now you know what to project. This part I am not so clear about.
You could either use overhead projectors pointed down, or something smaller. Another idea I have to reduce cost here is something as simple at using a small laser pointer with a mirror that has two axis of rotation. Since the image is black and white anyway, all you need to do is determine the timing for each pixel and turn the pointer on and off to draw a picture. Depending on how fast you can turn the laser pointer and off you should be able to achieve much greater resolution (talking out of my ass, but I hope) Again, mount it on an arm or use triangulation to determine where you projecting.
I hope this post provokes more suggestions on how to improve on the concept, but this really does look like a technology demonstrator rather than something practical. Imagine what you could do if you could take X-rays, MRIs, PET scans, and real-time ultrasound to merge them all together and project all that on information on the patient. BTW, considering from watching TLC it looks like most doctors operate with a whole bunch of crap attached to their head anyway, 3D goggles to really "see" inside the body wouldn't be too much of a hassle for them.
Untrue. (Disclaimer: I sit one desk over from one of the grad students who works on this, and I think Stetten is a cool guy.) There are a couple key areas where this is useful:
1. While a well-trained US professional can do as you say, there are a lot of hospitals that can't afford/find a well-trained professional (think rural and innner-city medical centers). If this boosts the diagnostic ability of other caregivers, it will help patients. (Now, getting it made cheap enough for those hospitals to buy... could be trickier.)
2. It's an excellent teaching tool. Well-trained professionals got that way after struggling through many years of not being able to see jack shit. Speaking as someone who's a med student on the side, I would love to be able to use the SF to compare to a normal static US scan.
3. This isn't really aimed at diagnostic US anyway. One of the big goals of the MRCAS and MERIT centers at CMU is "augmented reality" for surgery. The idea is that as the surgeon prepares to go digging around in an area whose contents are not precisely localized, he/she can take a look with the SF and know exactly where to cut.
4. Even for diagnostic uses, like US-guided biopsy, this brings improvement. Instead of having to look away from the patient to some monitor, you keep your eyes on your hands and on the patient at all times. Speaking as someone who's had to handle a laparoscope while simultaneously staring at a TV screen, it would be a lot nicer if I had that little bit of extra visual feedback about precisely what my hands and the tissue under them were doing.
I am glad that most scientific research doesn't hit the "slashdot meter" before funding decisions are made. I doubt that computers, penicillin, semiconductors, or much else would pass the "knee-jerk" judgments on this forum.
Anyway, it occurred to me that, when added to other sensors now being deployed at airports (portal monitoring), that this might have real value in security applications.
Flame away dudes!!
D
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Ultrasonic testing uses sound waves to detect imperfections in material and to measure material properties.
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Ultrasounds can be used for testing material imperfections in other things besides people (though of course things like x-rays are better and are often used on non-living objects). All the same, I'd be interested in seeing how cheap this is. If it's significantly less expensive than previous ultrasounds (and it looks like it might be) then drop in cost can make a lot of things 'possible' that weren't before. DNA fingerprinting was possible before PCR in 1992, but PCR made it cheap enough for common use.
Ultrasound does have engineering applications
"The comparison between the original and final thickness converted to strain readings and plotted on thickness strain diagrams. The thickness is measured by pointed micrometers, or by ultrasound gage. From the final thickness and original thickness ratio, TF / TO, an actual strain level can be developed based on constant volume and plotted on a thickness strain diagram." (Hogarth, D.J., Gregoire, C.A., Caswell, S. L., 1991, p. 88).
http://nsmwww.eng.ohio-state.edu/Stamping_Glossar
Abstract: Circulation calculations, which have traditionally been performed by taking the line integral of the velocity around a closed path, require detailed knowledge of the flow field. An ultrasound method for circulation measurements has been under development at WPI for several years and it has the advantage of allowing for the direct measurement of circulation without the need for the velocity field data. This time-of-flight method employs counter-propagating ultrasonic pulses. The time difference between the counter-propagating pulses around the closed path is linearly proportional to the circulation enclosed by the ultrasound path. The ultrasound method of circulation measurement does not require any calibration constants and can be non-invasive. The reliability of the method was assessed by comparing the directly measured circulation values with those deduced from the lift of a symmetric airfoil. Examples will also be presented where the ultrasound technique has been applied to the vortical flow over a delta wing and a tip vortex. Owing to its simplicity and ease of operation, the technique may be utilized in the future as a sensor in closed-loop active flow control systems.
http://ase.tufts.edu/mechanical/calendar/mar99.ht
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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.
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
How about you stop putting all kinds of stupid links in the writeup, so we can find the actual story without having to go to dragonslair.com and a geometry page first?
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Equally annoying is when you say, "An article on CNN says
We know how to get to cnn.com without a link to the main page. Just link to actual story, that's what we're interested in. That way we can immediately see where we're supposed to click.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
One good point is that a small, high-resolution image is more useful than a big, low resolution one here. Much of a big image is used to locate the context of what's being examined. With something that images where you're looking, you need less context.