[Fraterkes]

One thing that’s kinda awkward in the video: they mention one of the big shortcomings of ultrasound being that it can’t image “airy” organs like the lungs, and their expert responds to that by mentioning that the amount of angles/devices means that you still get imaging of everything surrounding the lungs.

But the critiscism isn’t that the lungs would obstruct you from imaging certain areas, it’s that there’s just very salient parts of the body that you can’t really image with ultrasound, which means this would not be a full bodyscan even if the resolution was incredible.

I think there’s some genuine intent here, if for no other reason than that it seems silly to transition from ai to hardware if you’re purely trying to grift. I just wish they responded candidly to the obvious questions people have.

[DavidHolz]

Every imaging modality has pros and cons. Like CT imaging is bad at soft tissues but much better at bones than MRI. This physics has a lot of really cool and unique properties and imho it obviously makes sense for someone to invest in them. And we are (with our own money, no investors, etc). In my mind, in the future, you really want the best "megabytes per second per dollar" about your body. And it's hard to beat this by that measure. It's also very possible to keep adding more and more sensors to this system. I'd love to add some more that further improve the imaging inside the lungs and brain. We'll see how far we get but imho over the long run we'll be the fastest way to do a lot of things and it will help a lot of people.

[IshKebab]

Not being able to image inside the lungs is probably only a minor limitation really. There's also inside the head, and inside the rib cage is going to be awkward too due to bones.

Also ultrasound just isn't that good of an imaging technology, even with full aperture.

That said, it's non-ionising and if they can make this reasonably cheap (big if), then it's better than nothing at all. Probably decent for finding cancer, especially breast cancer (no pesky bones there!).

[KaiserPro]

> it's non-ionising

True, but ultrasound isn't entirely benign. Depending on what frequency and what power it can crack solid parts of the body (its used to break up kidney/gall stones) it also can heat things up (which is, assuming my understanding is correct, why doppler scans for blood flow are not done on <18 week pregancy)

[tylergetsay]

The probes they're using are off the shelf probes used everywhere including on small animals, I don't see how you could compare that to a lithotripsy

[jkahrs595]

lasers can cut steel, so barcode scanners aren’t entirely benign

[KaiserPro]

Yes, no Reductio ad absurdum.

My point is, phased arrays of ultrasound have the ability to be destructive. In the same way that a single MIMO wifi AP isn't going to cook you, but 10,000 MIMO arrays steering coherently over you will.

[robbiep]

You know what already detects breast cancer? Mammograms followed by ultrasound.

We have screening programs for a reason. We know the sensitivity and specificity of these. They are widely available in any rich country that doesn’t treat its citizens like shit. There will absolutely be better stuff out there as we progress, with better sensitivity/specificity and lower harm (everything medical has some harm quotient) but I have a hard time wrapping my head around how they will best physics to provide better than state of the art today with this technology (and bow they will beat availability of current screening systems)

[21asdffdsa12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing ? So totally solveable

I dont understand though, why you have to simultanously do this from all sides- have the ultrasound swim around with the patient? Takes out the comlexity?

Or use boundary layers to keep the sound on the slice? Turn this cocktail glass full of patient into a tequila sunrise?

[Fraterkes]

I don’t know if you’re joking, but liquid breathing has only really been tested on rats, like famously the one from The Abyss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abyss, which died a couple of days later.

[wongarsu]

> I dont understand though, why you have to simultanously do this from all sides- have the ultrasound swim around with the patient? Takes out the comlexity?

One sensor can only see waves that reflect straight back. If you have more sensors (and fire them sequentially, like they do) you can detect pulses that are deflected, and measure the deflection angle. That gives you much better data

I get the impression that what they want is real-time scans, so you can see the organs moving and everything. But that would require a 3d arrangement of sensors, which is too expensive. Instead they have a 2d arrangement and move the sensor relative to the person in 1d. Having only one sensor and moving it in 2d would harm scanning speed and fidelity even more.

[roer]

As I understood it, they're using the rest of the array to receive when one is transmitting, thus getting signal from the opposite side of the body as well. I don't see how you can do this with just one device.

[21asdffdsa12]

You are correct. I was wrong. Thanks

[terabytest]

You’re suggesting flooding the lungs in order to get a scan?