Baus is the somewhat comic name that was given to the first patch capable of doing ultrasound scans. The crasis of bioadhesive ultrasound, as well as the scientific project, is due to a group of researchers from MIT in Boston. Professor Xuanhe Zhaofrom the university’s mechanical and civil engineering department, with his team wrote an article recently published on Science which explains all the potential of this ultrasonic bioadhesive device. The premise is that although today this technology is widely used to obtain live images of internal organs – think of the most common ultrasound scans for the observation of soft parts – the machines are still quite cumbersome.
The idea therefore is to create a patch the size of a postage stamp to attach to the skin to have easy (and prolonged) access to ultrasound images of the internal organs. For now, a prototype has been made and, net of the embryonic design, it has kept every initial promise.
It should be noted that the project was funded by MIT, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies of MIT – which sees coinvolto US Army Research Office.
The Baus prototype
The MIT patch measures two square centimeters and it’s three millimeters thick so it can be glued on the neck, arms, chest, any part of the body in short. Several volunteers wore it in all conditions, including jogging and cycling, obviously in the laboratory. And during these activities it was possible record high-resolution images of major blood vessels and deeper organs such as the heart, lungs and stomach. The researchers were able to observe with good quality and sharpness the variations in the diameter of the main blood vessels when changing position, the dynamics of the heart during exercise, the distension and contraction movements of the stomach while drinking and even muscle micro-injuries during weight lifting sessions.
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Potentially in the future it could also be used by hospital patients who need constant monitoring, a bit like with electrocardiogram (ECG) stickers for the heart.
“Let’s imagine that a few patches attached to various parts of the body can communicate with your cell phones, where the artificial intelligence algorithms would take care of analyzing the images“, Professor Xuanhe Zhao told the newspaper With news. “We believe we have ushered in a new era of wearable imaging diagnostics: with a few patches on your body you will be able to see your internal organs “.
Operation and at least one limit
Traditional ultrasound devices require the affixing of a liquid gel to the skin to allow a surface probe, placed in place, to transmit and receive ultrasonic waves. In practice, by exploiting the principles of echo emission and wave transmission, the devices are then able to create visual images. The problem is that prolonged monitoring is very complicated because on the one hand robotic arms capable of keeping the probe in place must be used, on the other hand the liquid gel tends to dry out and therefore lose its transmission characteristics. Even flexible experimental probes with tiny transducers have failed: MIT experts say they produce images at too low a resolution.
Here is the solution of combining an elastic adhesive layer with a series of rigid transducers to generate clearer and more precise images. The adhesive part that adheres to the skin is composed of two thin layers of elastomer that encapsulate one of solid hydrogel – a mainly water-based elastic material that acts for 48 hours like a common gel. The top layer instead adheres to a series of rigid transducers designed and developed from scratch by the team.
“The elastomer prevents dehydration of the hydrogel,” added researcher Xiaoyu Chen. “Only when the hydrogel is highly hydrated can acoustic waves penetrate effectively and provide high resolution images of internal organs.”
The only limitation of Baus at the moment is that it doesn’t have built-in wireless support to easily communicate the information collected. In fact, it must be physically connected to instruments that translate sound waves into images. However, the team is working on this front to allow greater freedom for the patient one day.