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One day last spring at a hospital in North Carolina, Dr. Joshua Broder prepared to examine a 7-month-old patient while she slept in her mother’s arms. Doctors suspected she had hydrocephalus — a buildup of fluid in the brain that is quite dangerous and that normally requires surgery to drain.
The condition is usually marked by abnormal swelling of a child’s head. But, Broder wanted to know, was this really hydrocephalus? He needed a richly contoured, detailed three-dimensional image to confirm the diagnosis — the kind that usually requires putting a baby, and her terrified parents, through the clatter and stress of an MRI exam.
But on this day, Broder was able to collect those images of the child’s brain in a few moments while scarcely disturbing her nap. Broder turned to a standard ultrasound scanner that normally produces 2D images but that he had souped up with a $10 computer chip that is usually used in video games to track the movements of wireless controllers. In minutes, he had all the imagery and confirmation he needed.
“Sure, 3D ultrasound exists,” says Broder, a physician and researcher at Duke University School of Medicine. “But we’re building a better mousetrap — one that’s smaller, cheaper, more effective — so we can bring it to more healthcare providers.”
There are problems with existing high-grade imaging technology, especially when it comes to working with infants. The scans cost about $1,000 and often require transporting the baby from an ER or a clinic.
Meanwhile, an MRI exam costs about $2,000, and doctors may need to choose between a longer, more detailed scan, which requires sedating a squirming baby, or a faster scan, which may produce blurred details. Most hospitals have only one MRI machine and a long waiting list; plus, even though GE has developed a quiet MRI scanner, much of the equipment in use today can be cold, noisy and claustrophobia-inducing.
“Ultrasound is such a beautiful technology because it’s inexpensive, it’s portable and it’s completely safe in every patient,” Broder says. Hospitals have been slow to embrace expensive high-end 3D ultrasound machines. But upgrading their older 2D ultrasound scanners with Broder’s solution would cost just $2,000 per unit.
Broder found the inspiration for his innovation a few years ago, while playing Nintendo Wii with his son. Why, he found himself wondering, couldn’t the ultrasound probes he used at work know their orientations in space just as the game controller he used to whack imaginary tennis balls did? He took his idea to the engineers at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
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We’re building a better mousetrap — one that’s smaller, cheaper, more effective — so we can bring it to more healthcare providers, says Duke University’s Joshua Broder. Images credit: Duke University.
They went to work. They affixed a computer chip with a gyroscope and an accelerometer inside it to the outside of a probe. They found that they could then run the ultrasound probe over a curved surface like a baby’s head or a pregnant woman’s tummy and generate a more three-dimensional image. A machine originally designed to produce a flat, maplike picture could now show doctors something rounded and three-dimensional.
The latest version of the team’s system uses a simple off-the-shelf video cord to hook a 2D ultrasound machine into a computer running special software that combines the 2D image with information coming from the chip on the probe.
Although the results are not as detailed as images coming from a 3D machine, they provide enough extra information to make diagnosing serious ailments like hydrocephalus much easier. While Broder is quick to caution that he and his colleagues are still testing concepts — they’ve received a grant from the Emergency Medicine Foundation of the American College of Emergency Physicians and GE Healthcare to further develop their work — he’s excited about the technology’s potential, especially in developing nations.
“There’s vital importance here to regions of the world where high-tech may not be available,” says Broder. “This 3D ultrasound innovation could make low-cost imaging available to billions of people.”