Heart disease is one of the leading killers and presents a global threat to health. Treating the disease isn’t easy either, as current internal diagnostic scanning devices normally only provide cross-sectional views for surgeons to work with.
Luckily researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) have some good news for us, before the Monday gets even more depressing.
The good news is a very small (1.4 millimetre) silicon chip that can take real-time 3D images of the heart, coronary arteries and the surrounding blood vessels, which according to F. Levent Degertekin of GIT, “…will give cardiologists the equivalent of a flashlight so they can see blockages ahead of them in occluded arteries. It has the potential for reducing the amount of surgery that must be done to clear these vessels.”
The chip is an “catheter-based” device that contains the sort of active pixel sensor that you can find on most cellphone cameras and webcams, and it uses ultrasound transducers to process signals directly on the device. Data from over a hundred elements is then transmitted via 13 miniscule cables, from which 3D images of the interior of the heart are rendered.
So far the chip is only in the testing phase, and is in the process of obtaining FDA approval and undergoing animal testing. So how about taking up jogging until then?
Source: The Verge Image: GIT