New blood vessel scanner with the ability to image in real time

A new handheld scanner uses photoacoustic tomography (PAT) to produce highly detailed imaging scans in real time. The new scanner will allow doctors to more quickly and accurately view a patient's blood vessels, which University College London (UCL) researchers believe could allow for the earlier diagnosis of diseases such as arthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as for a better understanding of such disease progression. 

PAT imaging uses laser-generated ultrasound waves to observe subtle changes in a patient's blood vessels, changes which can be an early marker of certain diseases (including some diseases which can't be seen using conventional imaging techniques); the imaging technique can be used for veins less than 1mm in scale and for arteries up to 15mm deep in human tissue.

While PAT imaging is already used in existing scanners, these traditional scanners require a patient to remain completely still for more than five minutes, in some cases for nearly an hour, in order to obtain high enough quality images of the blood vessels; in many cases, this is often impractical. 

However, in the new scanners, developments have been made in both the scanner design and in the mathematics used to generate the images, which means the new scanners are between 100-1000 times faster than traditional scanners. 

Further research is now needed to determine the extent to which the new scanner would be clinically useful in practice. Either way, another fantastic development for Medtech!