The wearable patch, which is about 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 the snapshots provided by scans routine. In lab tests, researchers used the patches to watch people’s hearts change shape during exercise, their stomachs expand and contract as they drank and passed out drinks, and their muscles sustain micro-damage while lifting weights. Professor Xuanhe Zhao at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the research team, said the patches could “revolutionize” medical imaging because existing scans are too short, sometimes lasting only seconds, and usually have to be performed in hospitals . Eventually, Zhao envisions people buying boxes of the patches and using them, with the help of smart algorithms on their cellphones, to monitor their heart, lungs and digestive system for early signs of disease or infection, or the muscles them during recovery or EXERCISE. The ultrasound (or Baus) bioadhesive 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 and are detected by the same elements on the patch. Currently, the patch must be connected to an instrument that converts the reflections into images, but the 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 there are already wireless handheld point-of-care ultrasounds, we are confident that we will be able to achieve the wireless version in a few years.” Details of the patch are published in Science. Even without a wireless version, the patches could make an immediate difference in hospitals, the researchers say, monitoring the insides of patients while they’re in bed, the same way electrodes are used to monitor their heart activity. Ultrasound is extremely common, with NHS England performing more than 8 meters last year. But the technique has significant limitations, requiring highly trained sonographers to position and orient the probes on patients’ bodies to obtain high-quality images. For this reason, most ultrasound scans are short and performed on patients who must remain still while the images are taken. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Wireless patches could circumvent some of these problems, as they can be fixed in place and left to take images for hours, even days, at a time, the researchers say. Beyond scanning organs for early signs of disease, the 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 toward mobile and ambulatory ultrasound imaging.” “Without the need for an ultrasound machine, portable and accessible ultrasound sensors would open up many future possibilities, such as heart imaging during exercise stress testing, at-home lung imaging for early detection of pneumonia, and more,” he added.
