Cell Phones Could Be Used to Increase Access to Healthcare Imaging

According to the creators of the technology, this new advance could improve the accessibility of medical imaging to billions of people worldwide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that about 75% of the world's population is without access to ultrasounds, X-rays, magnetic resonance images, and other medical imaging technologies that can detect tumors, diagnose tuberculosis infections, and monitor pregnant women. Researcher Dr. Boris Rubinsky, a University of California (UC), Berkeley professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering and leader of the development team, said that, "Medical imaging is something we take for granted in industrialized countries. Imaging is considered one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. Diagnosis and treatment of an estimated 20% of diseases would benefit from medical imaging, yet this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain. Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations.”

There are three main components in medical imaging devices: data acquisition hardware (connected to the patient), image processing software, and a display device. When these three component pieces are combined into a single unit, the cost of the machine is substantially increased. This fact led Dr. Rubinsky and his team to physically separate the components, keeping the processing software required to convert the raw data into an image at an offsite but central location possessing the resources to operate and maintain it. The central location could act as a control center that serves several remote sites where simpler machines can gather data from the patients.

Cell phones, after collecting data from an acquisition device, can be used to upload the raw data to the control center that will be process it into an image. The cell phone would then act as a display device when the server returns the image. "This design significantly lowers the cost of medical imaging because the apparatus at the patient site is greatly simplified, and there is no need for personnel highly trained in imaging processing,” said Dr. Antoni Ivorra, a post-doctoral researcher and co-author of the study. "The data acquisition device can be made with off-the-shelf parts that somebody with basic technical training can operate. As for cell phones, you could be out in the middle of a remote village and still have cell phone access. They're so prevalent because so little infrastructure is required to maintain wireless networks.”

To demonstrate the use of cell phones as remote medical imaging devices, the researchers provided an example with electrical impedance tomography (EIT)--a medical imaging technique based on the idea that electrical signals are transmitted differently in diseased tissue than in healthy tissue. In EIT, the difference in resistance to electrical currents is converted into an image or map of the particular test tissue.

The researchers created a simple data acquisition device constructed from commercially available parts that contained 32 stainless steel electrodes. Half of the electrodes were electrical current input sensors and the other half measured the voltage. For the demonstration, the device was connected to a gel-filled container, similar to breast tissue containing a tumor. The device transmitted 225 voltage measurements to a cell phone via a universal serial bus (USB) cable, and the data were then sent via dial-up to a central computer that could process it. After an image was produced, it was returned to the cell phone for analysis.

Dr. Rubinsky noted that, "This could open up whole new avenues of healthcare for the developing world. Health professionals in rural clinics could affordably get the tools they need to properly diagnose and treat their patients.”

The study was published in April 30, 2008, in the open-access journal PLoS One


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