Engineers Design Cell Phone as Medical Imaging Device

Improvising a new style of medical imaging, cell phone could now be used to make medical imaging, such as ultrasounds and CTdefine scans accessible to billions of people around the world.

According to the World Health Organization estimates, about 75 percent of people aren't benefiting from medical imaging that has dramatically revolutionized health care in the developed world, including X-rays, CTdefine scanning, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIdefine, and ultrasound.

"Medical imaging is something we take for granted in industrialized countries," said Boris Rubinsky, UC Berkeley professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering and head of the team that developed this new application for cell phones.

"Imaging is considered one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. Diagnosis and treatment of an estimated 20 percent of diseases would benefit from medical imaging, yet this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain. Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations," he added.

With the innovative concept, the ubiquitous cell phone will now assist health professionals in rural clinics in proper diagnose and treatment.

While most medical imaging machines are self-contained units that hook up to the patient to get the data, convert that raw data into a digital image and then display the image, the cell phone would transmit the raw data to the central server where the information would be used to create an image. The server would then relay the image back to the cell phone, where it can be viewed on the cell phone's screen.

Geared up with 32 stainless steel electrodes, simple power supplies hooked up to 16 electrodes create a current in the area of the patient that needs to be imaged, while another 16 will record the voltage.

"This design significantly lowers the cost of medical imaging because the apparatus at the patient site is greatly simplified, and there is no need for personnel highly trained in imaging processing," researchers explained.

The new technique for medical imaging is described in the April 30 issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Public Library of Science ONE (PLoS ONE).