Handheld Ultrasound About to Enter Physician's Tool Kit

Medical practitioners of all kinds may not know the name George K. Lewis - but odds are emergency room physicians and battlefield medtechs will soon come to rely on his handheld ultrasound device for diagnosis and treatment. Lewis, a third year graduate student at Cornell University, developed his handheld, battery-powered ultrasound transducer with materials costing just $100.

In the last 20 years, a baby's "first picture" has commonly become an image created by one of these $20,000 machines. Current ultrasound machines are bulky, heavy, and require a power outlet nearby - not to mention costly.

Ultrasound is used around the globe for a variety of imaging and medical treatment options. In the United States, obstetricians and surgeons commonly use ultrasound to get a non-invasive look at living tissues, and to see real-time what is going on, all without a need for exposing the patient to potentially harmful radiation.

Ultrasound is frequently used as a non-invasive treatment option for kidney and gallbladder stones by a process called lithotripsy, which sends high-energy sound waves, inaudible to the human ear, through soft tissue to break up the stones. It is also used to treat prostate and brain tumors, by tightly focusing the high-energy sound waves into the diseased portions of the tissue, leaving surrounding healthy cells untouched.

Ultrasound was first introduced as a medical application in the 1950s. The cost of the devices have kept them from becoming universally available, despite the obvious benefits to both patients and clinicians.

Ultrasound technology is also used in industrial applications, primarily to locate flaws in materials used in critical applications in which a failure could have catastrophic consequences, such as those used in jet engine turbine vanes. Again, the widespread use of ultrasound to find product flaws has been held back by the cost of the devices.

Lewis envisions his ultrasound device to help aim pulses of energy to temporarily seal gunshot wounds in the battlefield, and to help doctors do rapid diagnoses in emerging and rapidly changing conditions in emergency room situations. He also foresees his low cost device bringing a much-needed tool to researchers at a cost that will allow the ubiquitous research of other applications of ultrasound. He also thinks we'll all have brighter smiles, since ultrasound dental cleaning would be made affordable by his device.

"New research and applications are going to spin out, now that these systems will be so cheap, affordable and portable in nature," Lewis said in an interview with Cornell Press.