You Can Take Selfies Of Your Aorta With This Mini Camera

Joseph Flaherty | Wired Magazine | March 18, 2014

Scientific studies of selfies have yielded interesting insights on personalities, gender differences, and national moods, but scientist F. Levent Degertekin has invented a new camera that can provide high-def, 3-D images of your innards.

This “camera” uses ultrasound imaging techniques to create real-time, volumetric images of occlusions in arteries, but it’s built more like a miniature drum cymbal than a SLR. A donut-shaped silicon chip with a 1.5 millimeter diameter and 460 micron hole in the center houses sensing and transmitting circuitry and serves as the base of the diminutive device. A thin film on top of it flutters 0.00005 of a millimeter, creating sound waves which are captured by an array of 100 sensors on the chip, processed, and transmitted to an external video monitor at a rate of 60 frames per second via 13 gossamer cables that are threaded through a catheter.

Though it’s roughly the size of a grain of uncooked quinoa, the images it produces are able to replace two people in the surgical theater. Prior to the invention of this speck-sized sensor, technicians would pore over lower-fidelity cross-sectional images and guide the surgeon verbally while she held the patient’s life in her hands. Degertekin likens his little invention to a flashlight that illuminates the obstructions in a blood vessel, giving doctors a direct look at what they’re up against.