Engineering news
When doctors check in, it is to evaluate a patient's progress with tasks and exercises. But because these require movement, it is often difficult to get a clear picture of how muscles are functioning as they heal.
A team of researchers at George Mason University in Virginia, led by Parag Chitnis, have developed an ultrasound system that can be worn during exercise. It can, he says, give an unprecedented level of insight into body dynamics. “For instance, when an individual is performing a specific exercise for rehabilitation, our devices can be used to ensure that the target muscle is actually being activated and used correctly,” said Chitnis. “Other applications include providing athletes with insights into their physical fitness and performance, assessing and guiding recovery of motor function in stroke patients, and assessing balance and stability in elderly populations during routine everyday tasks.”
It also presented a tough engineering challenge. “We had to completely change the paradigm of ultrasound imaging,” said Chitnis. “Traditionally, ultrasound systems transmit short-duration pulses, and the echo signals are used to make clinically useful images. Our systems use a patented approach that relies on transmission of long-duration chirps, which allows us to perform ultrasound sensing using the same components one might find in their car radio.”
This new approach enabled the team to design a cheap, simple system that could be made smaller and battery-powered. The next steps are to develop software tools to analyse and interpret the signals.
This research was presented at the Acoustics 2023 conference in Sydney.
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