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Stamp-Sized Stickers Can See Inside the Body

Engineers at MIT are developing an adhesive device capable of providing continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs, and it's no bigger than a stamp.

“We imagine we could have a box of stickers, each designed to image a different location of the body,” says the study’s senior author, Xuanhe Zhao  , professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “We believe this represents a breakthrough in wearable devices and medical imaging.”

Topics:
Materials Medical

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: A team of engineers have designed a stamp-size device that sticks to the skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours. The current design requires connecting the stickers to instruments that translate the reflected sound waves into images. However, if the devices can be made to operate wirelessly, a goal the team is currently working toward,

    00:00:25 the ultrasound stickers could be made into wearable imaging products that patients could take home from a doctor's office or even buy at a pharmacy. The entire ultrasound sticker measures about 2 square centimeters across and 3 millimeters thick, about the area of a postage stamp. The bottom elastomer layer is designed to stick to the skin, while the top layer adheres to a rigid array of transducers the team also designed and fabricated. This pairing of stretchy, adhesive layers

    00:00:54 with a rigid array enables the device to conform to the skin while remaining in position to generate clear, precise images. The device's bottom adhesive layer is made from two thin layers of elastomer that encapsulate a middle layer of solid hydrogel. The elastomer layers prevent dehydration of the hydrogel. According to the researchers, only when hydrogel is highly hydrated can acoustic waves penetrate effectively and give high-resolution imaging of internal organs.

    00:01:23 The researchers ran the ultrasound sticker through a battery of tests with healthy volunteers who wore the stickers on various parts of their bodies. The stickers stayed attached to their skin and produced clear images of underlying structures for up to 48 hours. As the researchers work to make their design completely wireless, they point out that, even in their current form, an immediate application could include continuously imaging internal organs of patients in hospitals

    00:01:49 without requiring a technician to hold a probe in place for long periods of time while continuing to reapply the necessary liquid gel which acts to transmit ultrasound waves.