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

Genius

[jd142]

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.

Cute, but how useful in medical applications?

[sessamoid]

This doesn't change the fundamental usefulness of the ultrasound in medical uses. It certainly won't replace xrays or CAT scans, as the imaging modalities have fairly different applications already which are limited by the differences in x-ray and ultrasound physics.

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.

Re:Cute, but how useful in medical applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

This message is for those who doubt the usefulness of this invention. I was lucky enought to see Doctor Stetten's PhD defense at UNC (he already had an MD). His research involves diagnosing heart problems quickly with ultrasound.

>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.
This used to be true, but now we have 3dimensional ultrasound, which you can't really see from the video. The advantage is immediate diagnosis. Where CT scans cost hundreds of dollars and take hours to plan and schedule, ultrasound is cheap and fast.

This goes much further, however. I work in cancer radiation treatment. A huge problem we have is matching the CT scan to the patient when the treatment is being done. This device has the potential to let technicians place the patient perfectly on the treatment table. This could really affect the survival rate of patients.

For Dr. Stetten, his invention means that he can tell if a patient has a blocked artery without surgery. Slashdotters, remember that just because _you_ can't think of the application, doesn't mean there isn't one. Doctors don't have time to waste inventing devices without use. They create things that are directly applicable to what they do.

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.