2024-03-28 01:38:34
The future of health technology, both in Spain and in the rest of the world, involves miniaturization. The idea, to replace the huge machines with which the most precise analyzes are carried out in serious diseases with portable devices, aims to make diagnostic processes cheaper and faster. For this reason, for some time now some of the most prestigious international researchers have been working on devices such as the smart plaster that diagnoses with a laser and can detect cancer, heart attacks or hemorrhages.
Wearables, beyond smart watches and activity bracelets, are one of the great hopes of biomedicine. The engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) know this well and that is why they have been working on the development of a small sticker that uses ultrasound to monitor the condition of organs inside the body.
Featured in an article in the magazine Science Advances, broadly speaking, consists of a sensor that sends sound waves through the skin so that they are reflected by the internal organs and return to the sticker with information regarding its rigidity. These data are usually decisive when it comes to control diseases such as liver and kidney failure or the progression of solid tumors.
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“When some organs suffer from disease, they can become stiff over time,” explains the paper’s senior author, Xuanhe Zhao, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “With this sticker, we can Continuously monitor stiffness changes over long periods of timewhich is of crucial importance for the early diagnosis of internal organ failure.”
Organ transplant
The idea of using ultrasound in portable devices for treatment and diagnostic tools is not new. Already in 2005, ultrasound transducers were implanted in sheep to control and accelerate the fracture healing process. Since then, thanks to advances in soft materials, all kinds of devices have been developed that use this technology to obtain images of organs and use that information to measure blood pressure or evaluate cardiac functions.
The BAUS-E can be stuck on different parts of the body MIT Omicrono
Building on some of those advances, MIT engineers wanted to offer an alternative to ultrasound elastographya method similar to ultrasounds with a manual probe that is often used in hospital ICUs, especially with patients who have undergone an organ transplant.
In these cases, and in diseases related to the liver and kidneys, it is vital to control stiffness of the organs, as this can indicate a rapid deterioration in health which, in many cases, can lead to death.
“After an organ transplant, the first 72 hours are crucial,” says Qifa Zhou, one of the study’s lead authors and a professor at the University of Southern California. “With traditional ultrasound, you have to keep a probe attached to the body. But this cannot be done continuously in the long term. Doctors might miss a crucial moment and realizing too late that the organ is failing“.
To develop bioadhesive ultrasonic elastography (BAUS-E), the researchers relied on an adhesive that they had already developed previously for obtain images of deep tissues and organs. However, they had to modify it, since it only captured longitudinal waves and not shear waves, necessary to know the rigidity of the organs.
A first version of the MIT sticker that monitors organs
Thus, the entire process was based on miniaturizing ultrasonic elastography, until they managed to make the system fit on a sticker the size of a stamp. To achieve the same sensitivity as manual probes, engineers had to incorporate 128 high-quality piezoelectric transducersincorporated into a 25 mm square chip.
To allow sound waves enter and leave the device without loss of information, they coated the bottom of the chip with a mixture of water and polymer in the form of a hydrogel. This sticky, elastic substance is also what allows the device to adhere to the skin and be easily removed when not needed.
Experiments
To understand the device’s reliability and long-term viability, the researchers tested the BAUS-E on rats. This is how they verified that the sticker is capable of carrying out continuous measurements of liver stiffness for 48 hours. Thanks to the information collected by the device, early and obvious signs of acute liver failure might be detected, later confirmed thanks to tissue samples.
Now, engineers are studying how to adapt the design for use in humans, since this ailment has a high mortality rate of approximately 80%. “We suppose that, right following a liver or kidney transplant, we might stick this sticker to a patient and observe how the stiffness of the organ changes over the days,” explains Hsiao-Chuan Liu, another of the study’s lead authors. and professor at USC. “If there is any early diagnosis of acute liver failuredoctors can act immediately instead of waiting for the condition to worsen.”
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In principle, according to the researchers, no major changes would be necessary for its adaptation. The only current requirement is need to have an electronic system connected to the stickersimilar to the electrodes usually used in medical consultations, responsible for emitting and collecting sound waves through the BAUS-E.
For this reason, the MIT team is already working on including all the electronics and information processing in a patch slightly larger than the current one. The goal is for patients to be able to wear them at home to monitor the status of their organs for periods much longer than 48 hours. This would allow, for example, monitor the progression of solid tumors, which become stiffer as they worsen.
“We believe that it is a technological platform that can save lives” Zhao says. “In the future, we think people will be able to stick a few stickers on their bodies to measure many vital signs, to obtain images and track the health of major organs in the body.”
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#small #sticker #monitors #state #organs