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A Panoramic View of Your Insides
deepcleanfun writes "Researchers from New Mexico and Taiwan have invented a tiny probe — about the size of a rice grain — equipped with an ultrasound scanner that can travel through veins and arteries, taking ultrasound images of its surroundings. Unlike previous probes that travel through the body, which provide a view from only one direction at a time, the new device has seven imagers integrated onto the hexagonal prism that can see nearly everywhere at once."
Apparently they haven't even gotten around to testing it on animals yet. But they say it works great in a glass of water. The news might be a bit premature.
No nice pics either.
May contain traces of nut.
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Origami is the art of making figures by folding paper. They seem to have fabricated the sonar emitters in a flat piece and folded it into a hexagon. That seems to be the key to get multiple views.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's on a catheter, not floating around.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
There's a highly paid professional standing by the bedside manipulating the catheter by hand eg: twisting, pushing, and tugging a little tube to which the device is attached.
People... the only thing that is different about this than other instruments already in use today is that it can view in more than one direction simultaneously. How do you think an angiogram is performed? They stick the think in through the artery in your leg, and fish it up to the spot where the blockage is. Sure, it sounds scary, but it's done every day. I think this is a great improvement to help doctors.
It will be attached to the end of a "wire like endoscope" So no it's navigation won't be so much of a problem...They go so far as to say they will by able to pass it up into blood vessels in the brain to measure blood flow. Kinda weird, I would be bothered by the idea of a wire in my brain.
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