Currently, ultrasound imaging requires bulky equipment available only in hospitals and doctor’s offices. The new devices stick to the skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours.
The researchers, who believe their devices could eventually be cheaply available in pharmacies, applied the stickers to volunteers and showed the devices produced live, high-resolution images of major blood vessels and deeper organs such as the heart, lungs and stomach.
The stickers maintained a strong adhesion and captured changes in underlying organs as volunteers performed various activities, including sitting, standing, jogging and biking.
The current design requires connecting the stickers to instruments that translate the reflected sound waves into images. The researchers point out that even in their current form, the stickers could be applied to patients in the hospital, similar to heart-monitoring EKG stickers, to continuously image...