Ultrasound

You might not hear it, but rodents are known to speak to each other in voices so high-pitched that human ears can’t pick them up. Now scientists have found that these vocalizations might have a second purpose – they help them smell better.

It's always best if farmers can detect drought stress before crop plants become wilted, weakened and lower-yielding. An experimental new portable device could help in that regard, as it uses ultrasound to spot such stress in its earliest stages.

Currently, when doctors wish to continuously monitor a patient's blood pressure, they insert a catheter into one of the individual's arteries. There could soon be a safer alternative, however, and it was inspired by the tuning of guitar strings.

A wearable ultrasound patch could soon be saving lives, by monitoring the blood flow in hospital patients' brains. The device is only about the size of a postage stamp plus it works continuously, unlike traditional methods.

A fresh cup of coffee in the morning can be vital for facing the day ahead, but what if you had to wait a day to get your caffeine hit? That's on the menu if you like your Joe brewed cold, but researchers have used ultrasound to cold brew in minutes.

A simple little sticker could soon be saving the lives of patients recovering from gastrointestinal surgery. The clever device is designed to detect the presence of leaking digestive fluids sooner than otherwise possible.

Scientists have boosted the motility of slow sperm by blasting the cells with 40-MHz ultrasound waves to induce movement. Capturing the technique's impact on individual sperm cells, the study opens the door to new non-invasive fertility treatments.

In order to keep surgeries minimally invasive, it would be great if implants could be injected into the body in liquid form, then solidified once in place. Well, a new ultrasound-based 3D printing process may one day make that very thing possible.

Researchers have developed a bubble microrobot capable of being guided around the tiny complex blood vessels of the brain using ultrasound. The ‘microvehicle’ holds potential as a means of delivering drugs to treat brain cancer and stroke.

MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound patch that can image the bladder as well as a conventional ultrasound does, without the need for cold gel or an operator. The device could also be adapted to image other internal organs.

Earlier this year, we introduced solid-state micro-speaker technology from California's xMEMS Labs that's designed to replace coil-based drivers in wearable audio products. Now the company is aiming for satisfying low end with the Cypress speaker.

Smartwatches that can monitor a wearer's heart rate use light pulses to detect changes in blood volume. But research from Google proposes using ultrasound from an earphone's speaker driver to look for tiny deviations in the surface of the ear canal.