Dual-purpose tricorder

DailyTechInfo based on the materials of inhabitat: Stanford engineers develop a Star Trek-style tricorder to detect early stage cancer 

In the science fiction films of the Star Trek series, the concept of a tricorder was popularized - a medical portable device that, by remotely scanning the human body and analyzing the composition of the air exhaled by it, is able to determine the state of human health and identify the presence of certain diseases. In recent years, the level of development of modern technologies has come close to the possibility of creating such devices, the development of which is already being carried out by various groups of scientists and engineers. And another such development was a device created by a group from Stanford University. Hidden in the bowels of this device, microwave and ultrasound components can detect any objects hidden inside the human body, whether they are microchips sewn under the skin or malignant cancerous tumors.

The basis of this development, produced by the group of Professor Pierre Khuri-Yakub and Amin Arbabian, was an earlier development commissioned by the military - a device that allows you to detect hidden plastic bombs that are not detected by metal detectors. But, as studies have shown, the technology has a wider potential, which allows it to detect cancerous malignancies at the earliest stage of their occurrence.

The scanner of the device emits a stream of electromagnetic waves, microwave radiation in the form of a rather narrowly directed beam. Practically all materials either expand or contract under the influence of the energy of this radiation, modulated accordingly, becoming a source of ultrasonic waves. 

It is these ultrasonic waves received by a highly sensitive sensor that make it possible to create a map of the density distribution of the tissues of the viewed area of the body and identify areas where the density differs sharply from the "general background".

This combination of two different technologies made it possible to create a portable device that allows medical diagnostics to be performed from a certain distance without touching the patient's body. And this device looks like it just came off the screens of the latest episodes of Star Trek.

"We have been working on the creation of this device for a little more than two years," says Pierre Hury–Jakub, "And even now we have something that still needs to be thoroughly worked on. With a successful combination of circumstances, it will take at least five years to bring the tricorder device and conduct its comprehensive tests, and only after that it will become even more practical and widely available."

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12.11.2015