April 30th, 2008

Cellphones used for medical imaging?

Posted by Roland Piquepaille @ 10:01 am

Categories: Health & Medicine, Wireless & Telecom, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Patient, University Of California At Berkeley, Medical Imaging, Imaging, Cell Phone, Document Management, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Software, Finance

A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a technique for transmitting medical images via cellphones. This potentially could bring medical imaging to the ‘three-quarters of the world’s population which has no access to ultrasounds, X-rays, magnetic resonance images, and other medical imaging technology.’ The lead researcher said that this new system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible in non-industrialized countries. As medical images are usually pretty large, I was a little bit skeptical when I first read the UC Berkeley news release. But as the researchers have found a way to reduce these images to a mere kilobytes, it can actually be feasible. But read more about this brilliant idea…

You can see above the system configuration used for “the breast cancer tumors patient self-test screening. Outlined arrows indicate optional reporting of results to the patient.” (Credit: UC Berkeley, link to a larger version)

And you can see above how this technique could be used for breast cancer detection. On the left, you can see “the DAD [data acquisition device] of the system with two types of gel representing a breast cancer tumor surrounded by normal breast tissue.” The right part shows “econstructed result as it was displayed on the screen of a commercial cellular phone. Warm colors represent higher conductivity regions that are typical of breast cancer lesions.” (Credit: UC Berkeley, link to a larger version)

This research has been led by Boris Rubinsky, professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who also works at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. By the way, this university also has issued its own news release about this imaging technique. Rubinsky worked with PhD student Yair Granot and post-doctoral researcher Antoni Ivorra.

CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY.