Ultrasound

Blood clots can be dangerous, and blood thinning drugs aren’t always enough to clear them out. Now, researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated an ultrasonic “drill” that can break clots apart with the help of tiny nanodroplets.

Ordinarily, medical ultrasound imaging systems are big and bulky enough that they have to be pushed along on wheeled carts. The new Vave probe, however, can be carried in a pocket and paired with a smartphone.

Scientists in Germany have succeeded in developing the smallest ultrasound detector ever created, which is tinier than a blood cell and opens up new possibilities in what is known as super-resolution imaging.

For people who rely on Braille, reading displays and signs in public can be a challenge, but a new system could help. HaptiRead is a haptic feedback device that uses ultrasound pulses in precise patterns to reproduce Braille text in midair.

The brain is hard to treat – medications have side effects and surgery is dangerous and invasive. But now, researchers have shown how ultrasound can be used to affect specific regions of the brain, and even influence behavior in monkeys.

A new study is offering insight into how a novel ultrasound technique could help treat Alzheimer’s disease describing how the treatment weakens the blood-brain barrier in brain cells, potentially improving the uptake of drugs to treat the disease.

An emerging method is adapting x-ray to image soft tissue, so that its higher resolution can reveal tumors earlier than MRI or ultrasound. And now, researchers have taken the first image using the new x-ray method, as a proof of concept.

Ultrasound has become an indispensable tool for showing us internal tissues of the human body, but a new ultrasonic biosensor could see it offer a far more detailed and dynamic picture as the body responds to drugs or disease.

One consequence of cancer and other diseases spreading throughout the body can be the hardening of the extracellular matrix surrounding cells. Scientists have now developed a new way to non-destructively detect such changes using sound waves.

A team of researchers is proposing a radical new technique for killing cancer cells using low-intensity ultrasound waves. The work is still at an early stage but cell tests have shown sound waves can destroy cancer while leaving healthy cells intact.

The quality of 3D-printed metal parts could soon improve, thanks to new research out of Australia. Scientists there have determined that the application of ultrasound boosts the strength of such items, by modifying their microstructure.

Researchers from MIT have revealed the very first images of a human generated through a novel laser ultrasound imaging technique. Unlike conventional ultrasound, the new technique does not require any skin contact with the body.