Windows phones do ultrasound scans

Windows Mobile phones can act as portable ultrasound scanners (left), thanks to hardware and device drivers created by engineers from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). It's said the development will bring ultrasound imaging to the 70 percent of the world's population that currently lacks it.

According to WUSTL, William D. Richard, Ph.D., an associate professor of computer science and engineering, and David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering, have been working for years to shrink the size and the cost of ultrasound probes. Richard began his efforts more than 25 years ago, when ultrasound systems required a cabinet full of electronics, but has successfully created USB-based ultrasound probes that can sell for less than $2,000, with an ultimate target price of under $500, the university says.Zar, meanwhile, has been responsible for creating the firmware and Windows Mobile software for the probes. It's said that originally, the probes were envisioned as appropriate only for laptops and other small form-factor PCs. Last year, however, Microsoft's External Research division awarded Richard and Zar a $100,000 grant to facilitate the leap to smartphones.

William Richard (left) does a smartphone-based ultrasound scan of the carotid artery of David Zar (right)
Source: Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL)

According to Microsoft, Zar and Richard adapted the smartphone drivers so they could use USB 1.1 as well as USB 2.0 and, by repeatedly testing the probes on their own carotid arteries (above), found they could produce useful ultrasound images (pictured at the top of our story) at about three frames per second (fps). With PCs, the probes can achieve up to 30 fps, but Richard was quoted by Microsoft as saying he will be able to get phone-based probes running at up to 10 fps -- "more than adequate for many ultrasound uses."

WUSTL says the smartphone-based probes will be useful for imaging the kidney, liver, bladder and eyes, doing endocavity probes for prostate and uterine screenings and biopsies, and performing vascular probes for imaging veins and arteries. The probes may become essential to the developing world, where trained medical personnel are scarce, but where as much as 90 percent of the population has access to a cellphone tower. Caregivers can use a smartphone to scan patients, then email the results to a doctor for analysys, the researchers suggest.

"Twenty-first century medicine is defined by medical imaging," Zar says. "Yet 70 percent of the world's population has no access to medical imaging. It's hard to take an MRI or CT scanner to a rural community without power."