Electrical engineers at Stanford University are using the principle that Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) of Pentagon utilises to locate bombs and develop the tricorder technology that could be used to spot cancer tumours a foot away without using invasive procedure.

DARPA researchers created a detector that shot microwaves at a selected area. Once the microwave heats the area, the soil would expand and contract. The team then built an ultrasonic sensor capable of identifying from a similar distance various changes in the state of objects buried in the soil such as plastics, one of the materials used in improvised explosive devices.

Stanford researchers are using that same principle behind the DARPA detector when they check a person’s body for cancerous tumours that grow additional blood vessels to draw in extra nutrition and even grow bigger. They presented the study, published in Applied Physics Letter, at the International Ultrasonics Symposium in Taipei, Taiwan.

Doctors would be given a hint of the presence of cancer if the extra blood vessels attached to the tumours expand and contract at a different rate compared to the flesh that surrounds the growth. A detector they are developing would spot unneeded blood vessels that are indicators of the presence of tumours.

Pierre Khuri-Yakub, Stanford research professor, explains that the tricorder would work on the principle that all materials expand and shrink when stimulated with electromagnetic energy such as light or microwave. The movement produces ultrasound waves that travel to the surface and could be detected remotely, according to a Stanford press release.

The team then built a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUTs) that could discern weaker sound signals. The next step was to use brief microwave pulses to heat a material similar to flesh implanted in a sample target. They held the device about a foot away which resulted in the material heated by a thousandth of a degree that is within safety benchmarks, shares Stanford Assistant Professor Amin Arbabian.

Yakub adds the team has been working on the device for two years, but estimates it would take 10 to 15 years before they perfect the technology and makes it available to hospitals. Once perfected, it would be similar to the tricorder device used in the sci-fi TV series "Star Trek" by Dr Leonard McCoy to diagnose a sick member of the Starship Enterprise by just pointing it at the body which identifies the ailment with no need for probing or prodding.

On Jan 10, 2012, Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize foundation, announced a $10 million prize for whoever invents a medical tricorder like those used in “Star Trek.” He said it at a keynote address by Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Given Stanford’s timeline, Yakub says the XPrize competition would likely not have any awardee for at least a decade. Yakub says it would be more portable and cost less than current medical imaging gadgets such as the magnetic resonance imaging machine and CT scan, but it would be safer than x-ray.

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