It’s not the famous Star Trek tricorder but it’s close: researchers have developed a hand-held scanner that can generate highly detailed 3D images of body parts in almost real-time. The technology can accurately image blood vessels up to 15mm deep in human tissue, which the researchers say could help to diagnose conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis.
“We’ve come a long way with photoacoustic imaging in recent years, but there were still barriers to using it in the clinic,” says Paul Beard of University College London (UCL), UK, corresponding author of the new Nature Biomedical Engineering paper.
“The breakthrough in this study is the acceleration in the time it takes to acquire images, which is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than previous scanners…. These technical advances make the system suitable for clinical use for the first time, allowing us to look at aspects of human biology and disease that we haven’t been able to before.”
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