Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have made a groundbreaking advancement in brain health monitoring with the development of a wearable ultrasound patch. This innovative patch can continuously and non-invasively monitor brain blood flow, representing a first in wearable technology.
Revolutionary Design and Functionality
The wearable patch, designed to be soft and flexible, can be comfortably worn on the temple. It provides three-dimensional data on brain blood flow, offering a significant improvement over the current clinical standard of transcranial Doppler ultrasound, which requires a trained technician to hold an ultrasound probe against the patient’s head. This traditional method is not only operator-dependent, affecting the accuracy of the measurements, but also impractical for long-term use.
Published Research and Benefits
The research team, led by Professor Sheng Xu, published their findings in the journal Nature on May 22, 2024. This wearable technology ultrasound patch addresses the limitations of current methods by providing a hands-free, consistent, and comfortable monitoring solution that can be worn continuously during a patient’s hospitalization. According to Sai Zhou, one of the study’s co-authors, “The patch’s continuous monitoring capability fills a critical gap in current clinical practice.“
Cerebral blood flow is typically monitored at specific intervals during the day, which can result in undetected fluctuations between measurements. This new device can provide vital information for timely intervention, especially for conditions such as strokes that might occur unexpectedly. Patients recovering from brain surgery could also greatly benefit from this technology.
Technical Specifications
Geonho Park, another co-author and a PhD student in chemical and nanoengineering in Xu’s lab, highlighted the technical aspects of the patch. It is about the size of a postage stamp and consists of a silicone elastomer embedded with several layers of flexible electronics. One layer includes tiny piezoelectric transducers that generate ultrasound waves and receive reflected waves from the brain. Another key component is a layer of copper mesh made of arc-shaped wires, which improves signal quality by minimizing interference from the wearer’s body and environment.
Source: https://www.cioupdate.com.tr/yeni-urunler/giyilebilir-teknoloji/
