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Now Stanford electrical engineers have taken the latest step toward developing such a device [tricorder] through experiments detailed in Applied Physics Letters and presented at the International Ultrasonics Symposium in Taipei, Taiwan.
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First, all materials expand and contract when stimulated with electromagnetic energy, such as light or microwaves. Second, this expansion and contraction produces ultrasound waves that travel to the surface and can be detected remotely.
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Arbabian's team then used brief microwave pulses to heat a flesh-like material that had been implanted with a sample "target." Holding the device from about a foot away, the material was heated by a mere thousandth of a degree, well within safety limits.Yet even that slight heating caused the material to expand and contract – which, in turn, created ultrasound waves that the Stanford team was able to detect to disclose the location of the target, all without touching the "flesh," just like the Star Trek tricorder.
The device heats you up with microwaves and listens for ultrasound signatures of tumors expanding and contracting.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:17AM
Elastography isn't new, and it can be done with just the ultrasound transducer - no need to involve microwaves. Hard for me to see the appeal of this technique, as it seems more complicated than existing methods. It'll also be hard to pitch to patients - "we just need to cook you a little bit..."
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:38AM
I wouldn't object to being heated by a thousandth of a degree. My question is how they control for natural variations in temperature at such precise scales? Surely over the course of a few seconds it's entirely possible for a person's internals to naturally change temperature by a thousandth of a degree or more due to any number of biological factors. Wouldn't that either bork the process entirely, or make the "heating" part of the process redundant?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:27PM
please note that I have zero medical training.
my guess is that there's a difference between heating due to radiation and heating due to normal physiological processes.
somewhat related: shouldn't tumors be hot spots anyway, since those cells are multiplying at a faster rate than normal? or maybe at that point it's already too late to do anything about them?