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Groundbreaking, inexpensive, pocket-sized
Ultrasound Device can help treat Cancer,
relieve Arthritis
Newswise — A prototype of a therapeutic
ultrasound device, developed by a Cornell
graduate student, fits in the palm of a
hand, is battery-powered and packs enough
punch to stabilize a gunshot wound or
deliver drugs to brain cancer patients.
It is wired to a ceramic probe, called a
transducer, and it creates sound waves so
strong they instantly cause water to bubble,
spray and turn into steam.
Tinkering in his Olin Hall lab, George K.
Lewis, a third-year Ph.D. student in
biomedical engineering and a National
Science Foundation fellow, creates
ultrasound devices that are smaller, more
powerful and many times less expensive than
today's models.
Devices today can weigh 30 pounds and cost
$20,000; his is pocket-sized and built with
$100. He envisions a world where therapeutic
ultrasound machines are found in every
hospital and medical research lab.
"New research and applications are going to
spin out, now that these systems will be so
cheap, affordable and portable in nature,"
Lewis said.
The development of one of his portable
devices is detailed in the journal Review of
Scientific Instruments (79-114302),
published online Nov. 11.
Lewis, whose paper is co-authored by his
adviser, William L. Olbricht, Cornell
professor of chemical and biomolecular
engineering, also presented his research in
a talk at the November meeting of the
Acoustical Society of America.
Ultrasound is commonly used as a
nondestructive imaging technique in medical
settings.
Sound waves, inaudible to humans, can
generate images through soft tissue,
allowing, for instance, a pregnant woman to
view images of her baby.
But the higher-energy ultrasound that Lewis
works with can treat such conditions as
prostate tumors or kidney stones by breaking
them up.
His
devices also can relieve arthritis pressure
and even help treat brain cancer by pushing
drugs quickly through the brain following
surgery.
Lewis suggests that his technology could
lead to such innovations as cell phone-size
devices that military medics could carry to
cauterize bleeding wounds, or dental
machines to enable the body to instantly
absorb locally injected anesthetic.
Lewis miniaturized the ultrasound device by
increasing its efficiency. Traditional
devices apply 500-volt signals across a
transducer to convert the voltage to sound
waves, but in the process, about half the
energy is lost. In the laboratory, Lewis has
devised a way to transfer 95 percent of the
source energy to the transducer.
His new devices are currently being tested
in a clinical setting at Weill Cornell
Medical College. Under the direction of
Jason Spector, M.D, director of Weill
Cornell's Laboratory for Bioregenerative
Medicine and Surgery and assistant professor
of plastic surgery, Peter Henderson, M.D.,
the lab's chief research fellow, is using
one of the devices in experiments that aim
to minimize injury that occurs when tissues
do not receive adequate blood flow.
Their lab is performing tests in animals to
determine whether low doses of the chemical
hydrogen sulfide, known to be toxic at high
doses, might be able to minimize such injury
by slowing cellular metabolism.
Doctors are hopeful that the ultrasound from
Lewis' portable device will enable hydrogen
sulfide to be targeted to specific parts of
the body, allowing doctors to use less of
it, and cutting down on toxicity risks,
Henderson explained.
The medical doors that Lewis' device may one
day open are groundbreaking, Henderson said.
"People are realizing that when harnessed
appropriately, you can use ultrasound to
treat things as opposed to just diagnose
them," Henderson said.
"It's a wide-open field right now, and
George's device is going to play a huge role
in catalyzing the discovery of new and
better therapeutic applications."
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