Tiny Camera Captures Aorta Selfies

The ‘selfie’ has proven that it has enough relevance and pulling power to join the rest of the English vocabulary on a permanent residence basis, and so, without much further ado, we bring you word of a small camera that is capable of traveling through your body, capturing images at important places such as your aorta. This is made possible thanks to scientist F. Levent Degertekin who has developed such a tiny new camera that sends back high definition 3D images of your innards.

Needless to say, the diminutive size of this “camera” more or less makes it impossible to settle for a standard camera setup, lens and all. Instead, it will rely on ultrasound imaging techniques in order to create real-time, volumetric images of occlusions in arteries. This donut-shaped silicon chip sports a 1.5 millimeter diameter, while the 460 micron hole that is located right smack in the center will carry sensing and transmitting circuitry, functioning as the device’s base. An extremely thin film on top of it will flutter at 0.00005 of a millimeter, resulting in sound waves that are then captured by an array of 100 sensors on the chip.

These sound waves will be duly processed and transmitted to an external video monitor at a rate of 60 frames per second thanks to 13 gossamer cables which have been threaded through a catheter. The images it produces ain’t too shabby either, being able to replace two folks in the surgical theater to boot..

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets, Medical
Tags: Camera