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Kizzume
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Joined: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 2787
Location: Tacoma, WA USA
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 Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:06 am Post subject: Real Trekkie Tricorder Invented |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/realtrekkietricorderinvented
| Quote: | New handheld medical scanners coupled with regular cell phones resemble "Star Trek" tricorders and could see what ails you with a push of a button.
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The invention, using off-the-shelf cell phone technology, would allow medical scanners could boldly go where none have gone before - to the aid of the roughly three-quarters of the world's population currently without access to ultrasounds, X-rays and other imagers used for everything from detecting tumors to monitoring fetuses.
In addition to offering medical scans in developing nations, the devices "could find their way in ambulances, or rural clinics," said Boris Rubinsky, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Medical imagers are typically bulky combinations of scanners, processors and video monitors. Rubinsky and his colleagues instead physically separated these components, so the most complicated elements of imagers - the powerful computer processors - can reside at a remote central location.
The researchers next devised a simple portable scanner that could plug into a cell phone. The phones transmit the raw scanning data to the processors, which create images to relay back for viewing on the cell phone screen.
Cheaper approach
The surprisingly simple setup is described in the April 30 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
The scheme would significantly lower the cost of medical imaging because one processor facility could serve multiple imagers.
"You could be out in the middle of a remote village and still have cell phone access," said researcher Antoni Ivorra, also at Berkeley.
The portable scanner was hooked up to a cell phone with a USB cable and tested on a gel-filled container that simulated breast tissue afflicted with a tumor. Diseased tissue conducts electricity differently than healthy tissue does. The image that was sent back had the simulated tumor clearly visible onscreen.
Simple and flexible
These devices could work with any cell phone that can send and receive pictures or audio and video clips.
"The size of the data in the study was only six kilobytes, which is ridiculously small," explained researcher Yair Granot at Berkeley. "A one sentence, text-only e-mail message is bigger than that."
Rubinsky noted that "people are able to watch full movies on their iPods" so cell phone screen sizes should not be a major impediment.
In the future, ultrasound scanners could also couple with cell phones. Just the ultrasound scanner "might cost about $1,000, while a whole ultrasound machine with all the other components might be about $70,000," Rubinsky told LiveScience. "We could take medical imaging and possibly benefit the entire world." |
This is pretty cool. As the article suggests, this is going to have huge implications in places where mobile doctors are a must. 
It also gets me thinking about how in the early 80's, there WERE such a thing as mobile phones, but they were huge, and back then it was still very Star Trek to imagine the kinds of phones we have now.
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