September 26, 2024

Snika Gupta 

11th Grade

Brooklyn Technical High School

Ultrasounds, used for looking into the body using soundwaves, are useful to find disease, track pregnancy health, tumor or biopsy treatment, blood flow, and lots more. They often last from thirty minutes to an hour and need medical supervision. Medical ultrasound is the most common method for deep tissue sensing but has more restrictions than wearable ultrasounds and depends on the operator. Wearable ultrasound patches are changing that. 

One such ultrasound patch is the UBVM device that tracks the bladder volume of a person continually. How this device works is that it is placed on the lower abdomen and sends ultrasound waves to the posterior wall and the anterior wall of the bladder. With that, it knows the distance between the walls and estimates the volume. The hardware of the UBVM consists of the electric board, encapsulation layer, flexible transducer PCB, piezoceramic, flex cable, matching layer, encapsulation again, and finally a bio-adhesive layer. It also has a mobile app to display the bladder volume measurements. It is extremely accurate and does not require any cable connections to other objects. The wearability is what causes more accurate results, meaning the people wearing them will not be as uncomfortable as they would be with other objects attached. Bladder volume measurement can help detect lower urinary tract problems sooner. Having such accurate and around-the-clock results can aid in that even more. 

Another wearable patch is used for continuous heart imaging. Heart imaging can help cardiovascular diseases be detected properly. The problem with the earlier methods was that the non-invasive methods would often not have enough data to evaluate or not be able to track continually and required trained technicians. These results would have to be manually dissected by cardiologists in a tedious and long process. An ultrasound patch was developed that could capture images of the heart with interruption even when the person is moving. This provides information for clinics, a better personal experience with heart imaging, and more accurate results. 

Considering all this, we know that ultrasound patches are not perfect. There is much to be developed and improved on, such as the accuracy, the application to more people, and more accessible ways. Even with that, continuous imaging and tracking using ultrasound can detect many early diseases that would likely go unnoticed as early. Imaging ultrasound patches are bulkier and not as hands-free but still look into deep tissue well. Future development of these patches will cause them to improve and further help us, expanding their use from high-risk patients to athletes to pregnant women.