5 ms·

Yikes! This is brilliant innovation, but it should come with a pretty serious warning somewhere about the potential dangers of medical ultrasound. While the jur

Yikes! This is brilliant innovation, but it should come with a pretty serious warning somewhere about the potential dangers of medical ultrasound. While the jury is still out about a lot of things, there are major reasons why the NHS in Britain discourages expectant mothers from having private "4D" scans and additional procedures. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/02February/Pages/Warning-over-souvenir-baby-scans.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/02February/Pages/Warning-over-so... Brilliant to see you doing it though, and I'd be fascinated to see it paired with AI to make swifter diagnoses in order to cut down the length of exposure required for various measurements.

kelu124 11y ago
Hey Ben, glad to read from you! Let's not worry, this part is only the electronics heart of a probe.. and still, more part of a tech dev kit than of a medical device =) edit: disclaimer included in the homepage, thanks for the idea !
- bencollier49 11y ago
  It might be worth exercising the precautionary principle in this case. If someone builds your electronics and decides that you didn't warn them before they used it, you could find yourself in a difficult position. A simple disclaimer somewhere visible would do the trick.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    <pet_peeve> It's never worth exercising the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is epistemologically invalid: you can never know, much less prove, that something is "safe." The precautionary principle would have confined us to the caves, if not to the trees. In more modern times, for example, it's been used to fight nuclear power plants that might harm some people at some point, in favor of coal-fired plants that definitely do. There are valid reasons to be concerned about the effects of high-intensity ultrasound and warn potential builders of this gadget about them... but that's not the precautionary principle in action, just common sense. </pet_peeve>
- bencollier49 11y ago
  Hi - thanks for listening. You're doing great stuff.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  Really cool project! Do you have a total cost estimate somewhere? I toyed with a similar idea a couple of years back, but a friend who was actually working on developing algorithms for medical ultrasound told me I'd be looking at several thousand dollars worth of hardware. Importantly, how many transducers are you planning on using? I understand typical medical ultrasound uses a phased array with hundreds of transducers. That's what drove up my friend's cost estimate. What you can do with a single transducer, though, is listen to a baby's heartbeat using the Doppler effect. (You can buy a fetal Doppler device on Amazon for about $40, that could be a good reference for calibrating your power output to make it reasonably safe.)
maho 11y ago
> Yikes! This is brilliant innovation, but it should come with a pretty serious warning somewhere about the potential dangers of medical ultrasound. While the jury is still out about a lot of things, there are major reasons why the NHS in Britain discourages expectant mothers from having private "4D" scans and additional procedures. This is an overstatement of the available evidence. The link you post says so itself: > These studies have found no evidence that ultrasound affects mortality around the time of pregnancy or birth, or has any effect on childhood cancers. In randomised-controlled trials there has been ‘weak evidence’ that it may affect whether a child is right or left handed (known as handedness), which the reviewers say may be the result of confounding, rather than actual causation. I cringe when I read well-meaning but irrelevant warnings like the one you gave. To me, these warnings are somewhere between naysaying and spreading FUD. The NHS wants to make sure that millions of people don't take unnecessary ultrasounds, since a tiny risk, multiplied by millions, equals a few unnecessary deaths/left-handed children. The individual risk of unnecessary ultrasounds, however, is extremely low compared to the usual risks of pregrancy and childbirth. Many medical devices are unnecessarily expensive (and suprisingly badly designed, from a user-interface standpoint). There are already enough regulatory hurdles in place that prevent disruption of the medical device markets, let us not add to these hurdles by being overly cautious!
- pc86 11y ago
  I don't want to devolve the thread but I have to say I chuckled at the thought of "unnecessary left-handed children."
- bencollier49 11y ago
  I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the warning isn't against taking necessary ultrasounds, but unnecessary ones. And if there's a tiny risk from an unnecessary procedure, then why take it? And the concern with the device in the link is that it's an unregulated ultrasound device which could, in the hands of someone well-meaning but ill-advised, deliver a dose of ultrasound far in excess of that deemed safe by regulators.
  - kelu124 11y ago
imaginenore 11y ago
Your own link says there's no scientific evidence that medical ultrasound does any damage. It just keeps repeating "unconfirmed", as if that has any significance.

kelu124 11y ago

Hey Ben, glad to read from you! Let's not worry, this part is only the electronics heart of a probe.. and still, more part of a tech dev kit than of a medical device =) edit: disclaimer included in the homepage, thanks for the idea !

bencollier49 11y ago
It might be worth exercising the precautionary principle in this case. If someone builds your electronics and decides that you didn't warn them before they used it, you could find yourself in a difficult position. A simple disclaimer somewhere visible would do the trick.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  <pet_peeve> It's never worth exercising the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is epistemologically invalid: you can never know, much less prove, that something is "safe." The precautionary principle would have confined us to the caves, if not to the trees. In more modern times, for example, it's been used to fight nuclear power plants that might harm some people at some point, in favor of coal-fired plants that definitely do. There are valid reasons to be concerned about the effects of high-intensity ultrasound and warn potential builders of this gadget about them... but that's not the precautionary principle in action, just common sense. </pet_peeve>
bencollier49 11y ago
Hi - thanks for listening. You're doing great stuff.
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
Really cool project! Do you have a total cost estimate somewhere? I toyed with a similar idea a couple of years back, but a friend who was actually working on developing algorithms for medical ultrasound told me I'd be looking at several thousand dollars worth of hardware. Importantly, how many transducers are you planning on using? I understand typical medical ultrasound uses a phased array with hundreds of transducers. That's what drove up my friend's cost estimate. What you can do with a single transducer, though, is listen to a baby's heartbeat using the Doppler effect. (You can buy a fetal Doppler device on Amazon for about $40, that could be a good reference for calibrating your power output to make it reasonably safe.)

maho 11y ago

> Yikes! This is brilliant innovation, but it should come with a pretty serious warning somewhere about the potential dangers of medical ultrasound. While the jury is still out about a lot of things, there are major reasons why the NHS in Britain discourages expectant mothers from having private "4D" scans and additional procedures. This is an overstatement of the available evidence. The link you post says so itself: > These studies have found no evidence that ultrasound affects mortality around the time of pregnancy or birth, or has any effect on childhood cancers. In randomised-controlled trials there has been ‘weak evidence’ that it may affect whether a child is right or left handed (known as handedness), which the reviewers say may be the result of confounding, rather than actual causation. I cringe when I read well-meaning but irrelevant warnings like the one you gave. To me, these warnings are somewhere between naysaying and spreading FUD. The NHS wants to make sure that millions of people don't take unnecessary ultrasounds, since a tiny risk, multiplied by millions, equals a few unnecessary deaths/left-handed children. The individual risk of unnecessary ultrasounds, however, is extremely low compared to the usual risks of pregrancy and childbirth. Many medical devices are unnecessarily expensive (and suprisingly badly designed, from a user-interface standpoint). There are already enough regulatory hurdles in place that prevent disruption of the medical device markets, let us not add to these hurdles by being overly cautious!

pc86 11y ago
I don't want to devolve the thread but I have to say I chuckled at the thought of "unnecessary left-handed children."
bencollier49 11y ago
I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the warning isn't against taking necessary ultrasounds, but unnecessary ones. And if there's a tiny risk from an unnecessary procedure, then why take it? And the concern with the device in the link is that it's an unregulated ultrasound device which could, in the hands of someone well-meaning but ill-advised, deliver a dose of ultrasound far in excess of that deemed safe by regulators.
- kelu124 11y ago

imaginenore 11y ago

Your own link says there's no scientific evidence that medical ultrasound does any damage. It just keeps repeating "unconfirmed", as if that has any significance.