An adhesive patch capable of performing an ultrasound scan of a person’s interior during their daily life has been hailed as a revolution in medical imaging.
The wearable patch, which is the size of a postage stamp, can image blood vessels, the digestive system and internal organs for up to 48 hours, giving doctors a more detailed picture of a patient’s health than snapshots provided by routine scans.
In lab tests, researchers used the patches to watch people’s hearts change shape during exercise, their stomachs swell and shrink when they drink and pass beverages, and their muscles accumulate microdamage when they exercise. weightlifting.
Professor Xuanhe Zhao of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the research team, said the patches could “revolutionize” medical imaging because existing scans are very brief, sometimes only lasting a few seconds, and usually need to be performed in hospitals.
Ultimately, Zhao envisions people buying boxes of patches over the counter and using them, with the help of smart algorithms on their cellphones, to monitor their heart, lungs and digestive systems for signs. illness or infection, or their muscles during rehabilitation or physical education.
The bioadhesive ultrasound (or Baus) patch contains an array of tiny sensors (piezoelectric transducers) that transmit ultrasound waves through the skin and into the body. These waves bounce off blood vessels, tissues and internal organs are detected by the same elements in the patch. For now, the patch needs to be connected to an instrument that turns reflections into images, but researchers are developing a wireless patch to work with software on a mobile phone.
“We are working hard on the wireless version,” Zhao said. “Because portable wireless point-of-care ultrasound systems already exist, we are confident that we will be able to achieve the wireless version within a few years.” Patch details are published in Science.
Even without a wireless version, the patches could make an immediate difference in hospitals, researchers say, by monitoring patients’ insides while they lie in bed, much like sticky pads are used to monitor their activity. cardiac.
Ultrasounds are extremely common, with NHS England performing more than 8 million last year. But the technique has major limitations, requiring highly skilled sonographers to place and orient probes on patients’ bodies to obtain high-quality images. For this reason, most ultrasounds are brief and performed on patients who must remain still while the images are taken.
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Wireless patches could circumvent some of these issues, as they can be clamped in position and left to take images for hours or even days at a time, the researchers say. Beyond scanning organs for early signs of disease, “set and forget” patches could monitor bladder function, tumors and the development of fetuses in the womb.
Dr Nanshu Lu, a biomedical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the study, said the patch was a “significant breakthrough towards mobile and ambulatory ultrasound imaging”.
“Without the need for a sonographer, portable and accessible ultrasound sensors would open up many future possibilities such as cardiac imaging during stress testing, home lung imaging for early detection of pneumonia, and many more,” she added.