Category Physics

Wearable ultrasound patch tracks blood pressure in a deep artery or vein.
Credit: Chonghe Wang/Nature Biomedical Engineering

A new wearable ultrasound patch that non-invasively monitors blood pressure in arteries deep beneath the skin could help people detect cardiovascular problems earlier on and with greater precision. In tests, the patch performed as well as some clinical methods to measure blood pressure.

Applications include real-time, continuous monitoring of blood pressure changes in patients with heart or lung disease, as well as patients who are critically ill or undergoing surgery. The patch uses ultrasound, so it could potentially be used to non-invasively track other vital signs and physiological signals from places deep inside the body.

A team of researchers led by the Universi...

A 3-D virtual heart.
Credit: Johns Hopkins University

In a proof of concept study, scientists at Johns Hopkins report they have successfully performed 3D personalized virtual simulations of the heart to accurately identify where cardiac specialists should electrically destroy cardiac tissue to stop potentially fatal irregular and rapid heartbeats in patients with scarring in the heart. The retrospective analysis of 21 patients and prospective study of five patients with ventricular tachycardia, the researchers say, demonstrate that 3D simulation-guided procedures are worthy of expanded clinical trials.

Results of the study are described in the Sept. 3 issue of Nature Biomedical Engineering...

Wireless WGM sensing system.

Swapping electrons for photons, researchers have developed wireless sensors which are not subject to electromagnetic interference and are smaller and generally more flexible than the currently electronics-based technology. A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis is the first to successfully record environmental data using a wireless photonic sensor resonator with a whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) architecture.

The photonic sensors recorded data during the spring of 2017 under two scenarios: one was a real-time measurement of air temperature over 12 hours, and the other was an aerial mapping of temperature distribution with a sensor mounted on a drone in a St. Louis city park...

UBC researcher Carlos Gerardo shows new ultrasound transducer
Credit: Clare Kiernan, University of British Columbia

Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation – no bigger than a Band-Aid – is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone.

Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of the inside of the body and send them to a computer to create sonograms. Researchers replaced the piezoelectric crystals with tiny vibrating drums made of polymer resin, called polyCMUTs (polymer capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers), which are cheaper to manufacture.

“Transducer drums h...