4 ms·

This is a great post, thanks for writing and sharing. I'm a biomedical engineer and found both posts interesting. There are really exciting things happening r

by graeham 10y ago

This is a great post, thanks for writing and sharing. I'm a biomedical engineer and found both posts interesting. There are really exciting things happening right now where the murky area between expensive, slow medtech and fast-moving, lower cost consumer products are being explored. There have been some specatular implosions of approaches straying to far towards the consumer tech-startup approach. Like most things, the best path is probably somewhere in between. Medicine and health is hard because the systems involved are complex and non-linear. There is a higher burden for doing things right than other industries. That said, people also suffer from innovation being slowed by red tape and leading to increased costs. One great but unlikely solution would be for an improved market for used equipment, where the device loses its certification for medical use and obsolete software becomes open source. Little incentive for manufacturers to do this, but would be great for hobbiests, more 'wellness' rather than medical applications, and improved use in developing countries (where used medical devices like ultrasound machines often are donated but aren't used, because they can't be adapted to local needs).

agumonkey 10y ago
I trust the current post on the physics and EE side of things. That said I'm also very curious about the computer graphics side nowadays. It seems to me that historically, most of the complexity was handled through sophisticated mathematical abstractions at the material level, making the research very costly. How much post processing can be done to infer more information from less costly inputs (I'm thinking ideas like Super Resolution used in spatial imagery). Nowadays very very powerful GPU chips can be found for not much and could be used at this part of the process. Maybe you heard about such ideas, I don't know. I've seen NVidia involved in computer vision for the medical field, but not a lots filter through to me.
- temac 10y ago
  There are improvement in modes that have been recently achieved thanks to the computing power available in CPU or GPU. For example you can now see the microvasculature with far more details than before on some systems.
- graeham 10y ago
  There is work going on in this sort of arena, and I've wondered why there hasn't been more. I think probably there are a few reasons. First is medical imaging tends to have relatively low resolution and high noise compared to optical images. So there is a danger of over-processing. Second is, somewhat related, that I think there is distrust in clinical practice and regulation of black boxes where processing happens in the background. You're taking responsibility away from a doctor and putting it on your system, so there is a greater burden of validation. Third is cultural. Doctors get a ton of training to interpret the signal in these images, and I think there is both a badge of honor in this as well as a barrier to adjust to something new. In my Masters, one of the medical device design instructors talked about a prototype of a digital stethoscope with huge improvements to acoustics. Doctors hated it - even though the sound was better, it wasn't the sounds they were used to. Although this was before the Eko Stethoscope, which is a digital stethoscope and seems to be doing well. Maybe an example of market timing.
- LiesNStartupPR 10y ago
  Quick answer - yes, GPUs are now reaching the point that they are becoming useful, but also imaging techniques such as superresolution methods, ultra fast imaging, and others, demand even more computation. I expect to see advancements in the next few years because of this, and at some point (maybe 10+ years from now), that GPU power will exceed the demand from ultrasound and even the highest end systems can use them for all needs. This is not lost on the community and they are working on exactly that kind of research.
LiesNStartupPR 10y ago
Original post author here, thanks for your comments. There is a robust second hand market for ultrasound systems and probes, just google for those companies or search on eBay. There are also research platforms out there for imaging from various universities, some of which are open source. They aren't nearly as good as the commercial codes, but a few grad students can't compete against teams of full time professionals working for decades. Commercial codes are unlikely to be open sourced. Many are tied to the architecture of the systems, and most are reused in later systems and so are still useful decades later. It's highly unlikely that any company would open source them, it's just not how they operate. As for explosions of technology and advances - yes, I do expect more advanced electronics and signal processing to have a large impact on ultrasound in the coming years, but it is more complex than most in this thread give credit for, and will take time to appear.

by graeham 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

I trust the current post on the physics and EE side of things. That said I'm also very curious about the computer graphics side nowadays. It seems to me that historically, most of the complexity was handled through sophisticated mathematical abstractions at the material level, making the research very costly. How much post processing can be done to infer more information from less costly inputs (I'm thinking ideas like Super Resolution used in spatial imagery). Nowadays very very powerful GPU chips can be found for not much and could be used at this part of the process. Maybe you heard about such ideas, I don't know. I've seen NVidia involved in computer vision for the medical field, but not a lots filter through to me.

temac 10y ago
There are improvement in modes that have been recently achieved thanks to the computing power available in CPU or GPU. For example you can now see the microvasculature with far more details than before on some systems.
graeham 10y ago
There is work going on in this sort of arena, and I've wondered why there hasn't been more. I think probably there are a few reasons. First is medical imaging tends to have relatively low resolution and high noise compared to optical images. So there is a danger of over-processing. Second is, somewhat related, that I think there is distrust in clinical practice and regulation of black boxes where processing happens in the background. You're taking responsibility away from a doctor and putting it on your system, so there is a greater burden of validation. Third is cultural. Doctors get a ton of training to interpret the signal in these images, and I think there is both a badge of honor in this as well as a barrier to adjust to something new. In my Masters, one of the medical device design instructors talked about a prototype of a digital stethoscope with huge improvements to acoustics. Doctors hated it - even though the sound was better, it wasn't the sounds they were used to. Although this was before the Eko Stethoscope, which is a digital stethoscope and seems to be doing well. Maybe an example of market timing.
LiesNStartupPR 10y ago
Quick answer - yes, GPUs are now reaching the point that they are becoming useful, but also imaging techniques such as superresolution methods, ultra fast imaging, and others, demand even more computation. I expect to see advancements in the next few years because of this, and at some point (maybe 10+ years from now), that GPU power will exceed the demand from ultrasound and even the highest end systems can use them for all needs. This is not lost on the community and they are working on exactly that kind of research.

LiesNStartupPR 10y ago

Original post author here, thanks for your comments. There is a robust second hand market for ultrasound systems and probes, just google for those companies or search on eBay. There are also research platforms out there for imaging from various universities, some of which are open source. They aren't nearly as good as the commercial codes, but a few grad students can't compete against teams of full time professionals working for decades. Commercial codes are unlikely to be open sourced. Many are tied to the architecture of the systems, and most are reused in later systems and so are still useful decades later. It's highly unlikely that any company would open source them, it's just not how they operate. As for explosions of technology and advances - yes, I do expect more advanced electronics and signal processing to have a large impact on ultrasound in the coming years, but it is more complex than most in this thread give credit for, and will take time to appear.