Researcher: Mobile Phones Could Revolutionise Medical Imaging
Your cellphone one day will not only be used for making a call, sending text messages or enjoying mobile entertainment, but also could be a tool for your medical imaging. Your doctor will transmit your medical information from his server into your mobile phone’s screen.
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, developed an innovative concept to allow cell phone could be used to make medical imaging accessible to billions of people around the world.
“Medical imaging is something we take for granted in industrialized countries,” said Boris Rubinsky, UC Berkeley professor, but can be an expensive thing for poorer countries. “Our new system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations.”
Rubinsky and his team came up with the novel idea to create a new system by establishing a
large center where all resources for operation and maintenance can be fully stored. This central location would be used to service multiple remote sites and collect the raw data from the patients. That’s where the cell phone comes in.
The phone would transmit the raw data to the central server to create an image and then relay it back to the cell phone. The patient can viewed it on cell phone’s screen.
It’s almost possible, Rubinsky said, and the screen size of a cell phone should not be a major impediment since “people are able to watch full movies on their iPods.” It’s make sense, really.