SciFi To SciFact: Medical Tricorders

A third-year medical student from Cornell has brought us one step closer to the medical tricorder seen on “Star Trek”.   George K. Lewis has invented a device that  can create images to make a diagnosis and treat serious injuries using only sound waves.

The prototype device is battery-powered with enough juice 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.

“New research and applications are going to spin out, now that these systems will be so cheap, affordable and portable in nature,” Lewis told the Cornwell Chronicle.

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.

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.”