
A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners - jonjlee
https://news.ubc.ca/2018/09/11/could-a-diy-ultrasound-be-in-your-future-ubc-breakthrough-opens-door-to-100-ultrasound-machine/
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nicodjimenez
We'll see if they ship!

The company that is really killing it in this space right now is
[https://www.butterflynetwork.com/](https://www.butterflynetwork.com/)

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daemin
I worked at a startup making a handheld ultrasound machine back over a decade
ago. Even back then we could easily power the transducer using a mobile phone
capacity battery, you just need to step up the voltage to around 100v so you
could feed it through the transducer and you'd get a signal back.

Last I heard the place is still going although most of the people I worked
with have left already.

EDIT: Back then we were eyeing up using MEMS technology instead, though I
don't think anything happened with that.

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jessaustin
This would be great for animal husbandry. So much guesswork and tracking of
schedules would be unnecessary if a veterinarian weren't required e.g. to
determine follicle size. I will buy three or four, when they're $100.

~~~
dairychris
I would too, for the same reason and for other “paravet” diagnostic work on my
unit.

That said, in cattle I found (with a bit of vet coaching) it wasn’t hard to
recognise follicles, distinguish from (and gauge size of) a corpus luteum, etc
by manual palpation, at least for someone who AIs reasonably regularly anyway.

Our vets seem no less accurate this way than with their expensive heads-up
toy! (I doubt I’m as accurate - I don’t get anything like the practice they do
- but very handy for quick sanity check.)

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noddy1
you can get chinese vet grade USS machines for ~$500

~~~
tecleandor
Out of curiosity (and some docs I'm writing) :

Any brand or model you can tell me?

That's price bought in the US or sourced in China via AliExpress or similar?

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xiphias2
Paired with deep learning it would be very helpful for early tumor screening
at home. My girlfriend already had cancer twice, but the usual screening is
done only once every 6 months.

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azinman2
Overscreening/overtreating is a problem. We all have tumors growing all the
time, but our immune systems fight them off.

[https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/avaho/article/98510/oncology/...](https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/avaho/article/98510/oncology/how-
much-too-much-cancer-screening)

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rsingla
For the extra keen, here is the Nature Microsystems & Nanoengineering paper
about this work released Aug 27 2018:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0022-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0022-5)

Disclosure: one of the co-inventors in the article was my graduate supervisor.
I had no relation with this work however.

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jurassic
I hope this reaches hospitals and patients soon. I recently had to pay ~$1k
for a transvaginal ultrasound at Stanford Hospital. That is what I paid AFTER
insurance, I think the hospital billed the insurance company another $5k or
so. Absolute highway robbery, and prohibitive for many people in need of these
assessments.

~~~
21
> _A pelvic ultrasound typically is covered by health insurance when ordered
> by a doctor for diagnosis of a problem. For patients covered by health
> insurance, out-of-pocket costs typically consist of a copay of $10-$50 or
> more, or coinsurance of 10%-50% or more._

> _For patients not covered by health insurance, the cost of a pelvic
> ultrasound typically varies by provider and geographic region. The typical
> cost range is $250-$1,100, with a national average cost of $525, according
> to NewChoiceHealth.com[1] . For example, Concierge Medicine[2] in California
> charges $275 for a pelvic ultrasound_

[https://health.costhelper.com/pelvic-
ultrasounds.html](https://health.costhelper.com/pelvic-ultrasounds.html)

~~~
zaroth
> ... _Stanford Hospital_ ...

The times I’ve used them, the original bill was so outrageous I fumed for
days.

Insurance paid ~$15K and they billed me for my entire OOP max for the year
($7,500) for a service that cost about $400 tops to provide.

Contested the bill and they do a medical review of the coding. They had billed
as “intensive care” the administration of a single shot and a standard blood
count.

They actually came back and claimed the coding was correct! Kept fighting it
for about 6 months and they ended up dropping the entire thing at no cost. But
they still got to keep the insurance payout.

Just another form of price gouging / variable pricing which should be illegal.

~~~
21
I was pointing out that grandparent didn't shop around. Convenience always has
a cost.

And in US, it's always worth asking for the uninsured price too. When you
don't use your insurance, the medical providers compete against themselves and
you get market price. Of course, insurance tries very hard to prevent you from
bypassing them.

~~~
zaroth
Completely agree with you! At the same time, my personal experience is that
Stanford Hosptal billing is outright fraudulent.

And they appear to know it, so don’t treat the bill as some final price, it’s
actually just the first round offer to take advantage of people who don’t have
the time or inclination to fight it.

~~~
21
It seems you are right. Must be one of those bay area perks :)

> _Stanford Hospital and Clinics in Palo Alto and Sutter Medical Center in
> Sacramento are two of the most profitable U.S. hospitals, yet both hospitals
> carry the “nonprofit” designation, according to a new study._

> _The most profitable hospitals had the highest patient care markup rate, the
> authors found._

[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/03/nonprofit-
stanf...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/03/nonprofit-stanford-
hospital-among-top-u-s-hospitals-profiting-off-patients/)

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xt00
The thing looks pretty fragile -- one of the reasons why they use piezo based
systems is they are pretty robust.. I guess I am not clear how this system
equates to getting a $100 ultrasound machine.. I'm gonna go out on a limb here
and say this system probably is _not_ going to replace normal ultrasound
systems for some time.. but could be used to wrap one of these membranes
around say your heart and have something like an implantable ultrasound heart
monitor..

~~~
rsingla
Sorry, can I have some explanation on how piezo-based ultrasound systems
aren't considered fragile? Even within their casing, dropping or banging one
risks damaging the crystals.

Using Philips Lumify, Clarius' C-3, and other transducers, I think we've seen
a bit of what low cost ($1k - $10k range) ultrasound machines with the same
form factor can do to the market. Rather than displace the whole market, low
cost ultrasound created a new fragment and opened doors for more clinicians
and more clinical applications. The higher end machines are still regularly
used and sought after (you can't really get the image quality and amazing
beamforming otherwise).

I do like the idea of implantable ultrasound heart monitor! Fun to think
about.

Disclosure: one of the co-inventors in the article was my graduate supervisor.
I had no relation with this work however.

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lnsru
One still needs expensive FPGA or DSP for beamforming in decent ultrasound
machine. Nothing for 100$. Maybe some single channel sensor, but I also doubt
that after FDA approval price will stay in 100$ range. Plus I am worried about
long time stability of polymers. Moisture or UV or mechanical load can alter
polymer’s structure.

~~~
snops
Moore's law will take care of the processing cost nicely, especially as more
commodity processors become powerful enough to handle it.

The ADCs and other analog stuff might be more of a hurdle, the design of them
is quite hard, they aren't able to take advantages of smaller transistors as
well, and competition in the space is decreasing as semiconductor companies
keep merging (e.g. Analog Devices and Linear Technologies).

~~~
namibj
At these low frequencies very simple oversampling Delta-Sigma ADCs work well,
considering the sample rate is in the low 3-digit MHz range at most, which can
easily be processed by even an 15$ FPGA that has SerDes suitable for USB3 or
PCIe2 [0]. Considering you can just shift the noise out of the frequency of
your ultrasound with the correct averaging filter in the FPGA to convert the
1-bit high sample rate to many-bit passband (one might want to fold the
quadrature demodulator for RX phase sensitivity into this filter to save on
comnpute). It would basically be a many-channel, fixed frequency (by software
configuration only) RX SDR.

[0]:
[https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Lattice/LFE5UM5G-25F-8MG...](https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Lattice/LFE5UM5G-25F-8MG285I)

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madengr
The clock jitter may get you. You can oversample and decimate to obtain the
equivalent ENOB, but then the sample clock stability becomes more difficult
and costly.

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mkoryak
Great, now instead of simply googling my symptoms, I can also attempt to read
an ultrasound. Image search maybe?

~~~
woolvalley
You can also use ultrasounds to see your body composition. As in how much of
this body part is fat vs muscle.

Although I think 3d imaging will work in a more convenient manner for that
purpose, and it will only get cheaper, so I doubt it will become that popular
for that purpose if it was made cheap.

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ChuckMcM
Ok, that is just awesome. There are a ton of uses for low cost ultrasound from
trauma care to package inspection.

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lostlogin
Package inspection? As in parcels? If so, how do they get an acoustic window?

~~~
namibj
X-ray/CT is much more useful for these.

