Ultrasound-On-A-Chip Can Make Medical Imaging So Cheap?

Medical Imaging Device 

Entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg has begun the creation of what seems to be like a scanner, the size of an iPhone that can be held up to a person’s chest to see a moving 3D image of what is inside. Rothberg has raised a $100 billion for the development of the medical imaging device which is as easy as a stethoscope and will help doctors in the most amazing way.

 The technology according to patent documents is dependent on a new type of ultrasound chip which would eventually lead to ways in destroying cancer cell with heat or deliver information to the brain cells.

Marrying semiconductor technology to problems in biology is a knack which Rothberg has and he had created and sold two DNA sequencing companies, a `454 and Ion Torrent Systems’ and `A Semiconductor DNA Sequencer’, for over $500 million.

The imaging system is being developed by Butterfly Network which is a three year old company that is far advanced on several ventures which according to Rothberg would be coming out of 4Combinator, an incubator which he has created to begin and finance companies that combine medical sensor together with a branch of artificial intelligence science known as deep learning.

Versatile New Ultrasound Scanners 

Rothberg has not commented on how exactly the Butterfly’s device would work or what it would like, but states that the details would only come up when on stage selling it which would probably be in the next 18 months.

However, he guarantees it to be small, which would cost a few hundred dollars and would be connected to a phone as well as be capable to do things like diagnose breast cancer or even visualize a foetus.

Butterfly describes its aim in the patent application as a means of building compact, versatile new ultrasound scanners which could create 3D images in real time.

This could be held up to a person’s chest and one could view through `what seems to be a window’ in the body, as per the documents. Butterfly seems to be betting on the largest bet ever, that any company could have placed on an emerging technology in which ultrasound emitters are etched directly on a semiconductor wafer, together with circuits and processors and the devices are known as `capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers or CMUTs

Ultrasound – Type of Imaging Test 

Ultrasound is often used by doctors than other type of imaging test which includes viewing a baby at the time of pregnancy, to locate tumours in soft tissues like the liver as well as a recent development in treating prostate cancer by heating up cells with the help of sound waves.

Several of the ultrasound machines tend to use small piezoelectric crystals or ceramic in order to generate and receive sound waves though they have to be carefully wired together and attached through cables to a separate box in processing the signals.

Those who are capable of integrating ultrasound elements directly on a computer chip can manufacture them in a cheap manner in large batches and also create a kind of arrays which can produce 3D images.

This vision of the product was around for several years and it is perhaps a matter of time to wait and watch to see if the product will make its ways into a market validated reality.