Medical Imaging With a Hacked LCD Projector
An anonymous reader writes "Grad students at UC Irvine have built a spatial frequency domain imaging system using parts from a cheap LCD projector and a digital camera. The system can be used to check the level of bruising or oxygenation in layers of tissue that aren't visible to the naked eye, according to an article in Chemical and Engineering News. An accompanying video shows the series of patterned pulses that the improvised imaging system makes in order to read hemoglobin and fat levels below the surface of the skin. A more sophisticated version of the imaging system is being commercialized by a startup within UC Irvine, called Modulated Imaging. The article and video also describe infrared brain scanners that can non-invasively check for brain bleeds, and multiphoton microscopes that produce stunning images of live skin cells."
This is great, but the problem is the FDA has these rules about medical devices and the testing and requirements and redtape you have wade through before this device can be legally used in a medical environment.
They invented the artificial heart... but most its population could not receive the simplest of medical care. That was called 'backwards' and 'repressive', and yet we are slowly reproducing the same model in the US.
thank the Dalkon Shield, and several dozen other money grubbing, lying murderers who caused the FDA to behave like it does.
And later, after it is patented, made into a product, and commercialized, it will cost most hospitals more than $100,000.00. And when you need a scan, your bill will show an $8,000.00 medical imaging cost to the insurance company, while your out of pocket will be $2,000.00. And since it is patented, nobody will be able to raise the capital to compete for many years to come.
captured prisoners were tied, then placed inside of logs while people beat on the outside with clubs and hammers.
In the United States, we have a higher tech version called an "MRI."
If this technology pans out, I'll mail them a hot dog. If it keeps me from ever having an MRI again, I'll send them THREE hot dogs. Any way they want them. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Get yourself one of these personal home scanners, a copy of "Brain Surgery for Dummies", and sanitize the old Black & Decker and the Ginsu knives . . .
Maybe such a cheapo device could enable some office scanning that could eliminate the need for a much more expensive hospital scan?
Although with one of these scanners, you could open up your own alternative pseudo-scientific medical clinic. Ordinary folks never understand what they see in these scans anyway. Just point to something in the picture and say, "See this here? If you drink shark cartilage tea, this will be gone by next week, when you come for your next scan."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I spent two hours in a 3-Tesla MRI scanner this morning getting my occipital lobes scanned while I had to fixate on a dot that would change color back and forth from red to blue, requiring trigger button presses. Besides the expected marching checkerboard rows, they showed behind the dot, every couple seconds: face... face... upside-down face... house... upside-down house... face... house... upside-down face... face... house... face... upside-down house... upside-down house... face... etc. Then, they would show the dot behind words every couple seconds: tennis... cubic... weapon... village... curved... submit... option... mobile... curved... tennis... letter... village... etc. Then, behind four-digit numbers: 8663... 1845... 2853... 9231... 1845... 4408... 7392... 8663... 1424... etc. And finally, behind names of numbers: thirty... eleven... seventy... twelve... eight... fifty-three... seventy-two... ten... That was obviously to pick out some artifact.
These images were being displayed from a PowerMac using some software from a company called PsychoGenix or something (I forget). One funny moment was when it underestimated the Mac screen resolution, and displayed the central fixation dot in the upper left. They apologized for that being in the wrong place and it took them a while to move it back to the center. I didn't think to look more closely at how the actual large flat screen display above the magnet worked, when I had my chances. But the image was focused down an optical path down mirrors to me lying face up in the coil. During the control scans they said "close your eyes and let your mind wander" and I daydreamed about a job at PsychoGenix.
Afterwards I saw the fMRI images corresponding to faces, words, lines, etc. They only had a resolution down to 2 mm, so active regions looked like symmetric clumps of squares on the screen.
When he was buried alive by the Gravedigger, he used a digital camera to determine the mineral content of the dirt, and sent an SMS to Booth as to their location, which was divined by Zack. Man I really didn't think him and Temperance were going to make it out alive
"We're going out now, Stewie. Becky's coming to babysit, and we've locked the LCD projector in the bedroom."
"DAMN YOU WOMAN!"
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
without having to slice them out of the body first" @1:00
Great innovation. Now the doctors won't have to cut me to pieces every time they examine a bruise.
Some people are making smart phones do basic medical sensing. The cameras an see patients parts and colors; the accelerometers can measure vibrations. Some devices can plug in for chemical analysis.