Medical Images on Cell Phones

“Imaging is considered one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. Diagnosis and treatment of an estimated 20% of diseases would benefit from medical imaging, yet this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain. Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations,” said Rubinsky.

Under Rubinsky’s new technology, an independent data acquisition device (DAD) at a remote patient site would be connected via cellular phone technology with an advanced image reconstruction and hardware control multiserver unit at a central site anywhere in the world. The unprocessed, raw data from the patient site would be reconstructed at the cutting-edge central facility with the sophisticated software and hardware. This data would then be returned to the cellular phone at the DAD site in the form of an image on its screen. “The DAD can be made with off-the-shelf parts that somebody with basic technical training can operate,” Rubinsky noted. Research is continuing, but the project has been successfully tested and supported by several research institutes.

For more information: (972) 2-658-5216; rubinsky@cs.huji.ac.il