Archive for the ‘Washington University in St. Louis’ tag
Ultrasound to go
When most people think of laboratory/medical equipment, they think of massive machines full of sophisticated electronics and gear. But, thanks to Moore’s Law (which helps electronics get smaller, cheaper, and more power efficient), equipment that formerly required massive machinery, may be duplicated in the form of handheld devices, like this USB ultrasound gear from Laborie Medical Technologies (FDA approved):
LMT bundles software with their ultrasound probes to deliver images on PCs running Windows XP, but to use it on a phone you’ll need software from William Richard’s group from Washington University in St. Louis, who, with funding from Microsoft, have created a client allowing you to access ultrasound images on Windows Mobile devices! They’ve even released an SDK to help other enterprising researchers create other applications which can make use of these portable UltraSound devices and have them work on any Windows Mobile phone with a USB interface!
Such gear could bring ultrasound access to countries or regions lacking significant healthcare infrastructure, and similar devices could dramatically change how biomedical research is conducted.
For more information, read the presentation that David M. Zar gave at the Medical Records Institute’s TEPR+ (Towards the Electronic Patient Record) conference, and check out the live video demonstration as well as the UltraSoundUSB page on YouTube:
Let’s hope this is only the first in a long line of portable electronics interfacing with readily available mobile phone technology.