Stanford researchers working on technology for detection of buried plastic explosives may have come up with a way of spotting tumors deep within the human body. The technology works by delivering microwaves toward the area being analyzed, exciting the tissue so that it in turn emits ultrasound waves. An ultrasound transducer is then used to detect the signal and a computer processes the results to reconstruct the image.
The technology relies on capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers that are able to detect very weak signals that travel through varying media. The device doesn’t even have to make contact with the object that’s being scanned.
The team performed experiments using objects stuck into a tissue-like material, which they were able to detect while keeping the device about a foot away from the target.
Here’s a short animation of how the technology works:
Study in Applied Physics Letters: Non-contact thermoacoustic detection of embedded targets using airborne-capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers…
Source: Stanford…