Everyone knows smartphones can be used as calendars, calculators, radios and cameras. But, did you know they can also be used as microscopes that have the potential to save lives? They are called smartphone microscopes and dermatologists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) think these devices could improve the detection of skin cancer in developing countries.
New scanning technology which will give a much clearer picture of lung disease has taken a major step forward thanks to scientists at The University of Nottingham. The experts at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre have developed a process using specially treated krypton gas as an inhalable contrast agent to make the spaces inside the lungs show up on an Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.
More than 25% of the people on the national US waiting list for a heart will die before receiving one. Despite this discouraging figure, heart transplants are still on the rise. There just hasn't been an alternative. Until now. The "cyborg heart patch," a new engineering innovation from Tel Aviv University, may single-handedly change the field of cardiac research.
It's a case of life imitating art. Much as the sci-fi film "The Matrix" depicted a device capable of enhancing skill acquisition, researchers at HRL Laboratories, LLC, have discovered that low-current electrical brain stimulation can modulate the learning of complex real-world skills.
With apps and activity trackers measuring every step people take, every morsel they eat, and each symptom or pain, patients commonly arrive at doctor's offices armed with minutely detailed data they've been collecting about themselves. Yet health care providers lack the capacity or tools to review five years of Fitbit logs or instantaneously interpret data from dozens of lifestyle, fitness or food tracking apps that a patient might have on a cell phone, according to new research.
University of Melbourne doctors and engineers are using supercomputers to create 3D models from patients with heart disease, with photos from a camera thinner than a human hair. The images, gathered during a routine angiogram, are fed into a supercomputer.
When remote regions with limited health facilities experience an epidemic, they need portable diagnostic equipment that functions outside the hospital. As demand for such equipment grows, EPFL researchers have developed a low-cost and portable microfluidic diagnostic device. It has been tested on Ebola and can be used to detect many other diseases.