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Customer Story: NASA Researchers develop ultrasound on the Space Station and Mediphan brings them back to Earth!

Mediphan and NASA Researchers Pair Up for a Remote Diagnostics Solution

On the International Space Station (ISS), the diagnosis of medical issues and injuries is problematic not only due to the fact that X-RAY, CAT, and MRI machines are too bulky for transportation into space, but also because crew aboard the space station does not have substantial diagnostic training. Furthermore, the nearest doctors and hospitals are over 250 miles away on Earth.

The ISS, however, does have an ultrasound machine on-board that was used as part of experiments on the effects of microgravity on human health. During medical use, the ultrasound machine’s hand-held transducer emits high-frequency sound waves that partially reflect at points of differing density, such as between soft tissue and bone. The machine’s computer translates the echoes into a two- or three-dimensional video representation and outputs the video through a VGA port. On Earth, ultrasound is commonly used for imaging fetus development, abdominal conditions like gallstones, and blood flow in patients with arterial disease. Applications such as the diagnosis of broken bones or collapsed lungs are very difficult to do with ultrasound, given the high density differences of bone and air, which completely reflect the ultrasound waves and prevent clear images of deeper tissue.

In 2000, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funded Scott Dulchavsky,M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, to develop a versatile ultrasound diagnostic technique for remote use on the ISS. Dulchavsky tested new ultrasound applications and found that, in many cases, such as with collapsed lungs, the technique worked better than X-ray imaging. He became lead investigator for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity (ADUM) experiment, a collaborative effort between Johnson Space Center, Henry Ford Hospital, and Wyle Laboratories Inc. in Houston and was ultimately able to demonstrate the effectiveness of ultrasound as a remote and multipurpose diagnostic tool in space.

In keeping with NASA’s mandate to translate space technologies into applications for terrestrial use, Dr. Dulchavsky's team encountered one major obstacle: there were no cost-effective, technologically viable methods for sending ultrasound scans over long distances without a loss of image quality. While high satellite uplink and downlink channels are available to NASA, most environments are limited by simple broadband internet.

When he showed the research team the video converter equipment that had been used to accomplish a similar goal on the space station, it was generally agreed that it was far too complicated a solution to use on Earth. It was also too cumbersome to pack around with sports teams the hospital is responsible for, and required too much expertise to setup and use.

““We have extensive satellite capabilities and telemedical support at NASA, but we don’t have these for common terrestrial use,” said Dr. Dulchavsky.

Drawing on this experience with NASA, Mediphan was formed to overcome this challenge. The goal of Mediphan is to provide practical and accessible video streaming and capture solutions to the field of Medicine.

The result came in the form of Mediphan DistanceDoc and MedRecorder devices. Each device plugs into the VGA port of any standard ultrasound or medical machine and then connects to a computer or PACS server by a universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 or Local Area Network (LAN) Ethernet. A non-physician can, with minimal technical know-how, install Mediphan’s technology and use it to send medical imaging for consultation with experts. Coupled with the highly portable General Electric LOGIQ laptop ultrasound machine and the NASA-developed instructional software now modified for broader use, even the medically inexperienced can consult with doctors remotely to diagnose medical issues when and where they occur.

Mediphan’s MedRecorder and DistanceDoc devices enable the remote ultrasound techniques developed for space to be employed on Earth. By capturing, transmitting, and storing diagnostic-quality ultrasound imagery and video, the devices allow doctors to diagnose injuries and other conditions while not in the same room, building, or even hemisphere as their patients.

The technology is also helping improve education, allowing a medical trainee on duty to share diagnostic information with an attending doctor elsewhere. Mediphan MedRecorder offers the ability to archive personal portfolios documenting proficiency in diagnostic techniques and provides an affordable way to store and maintain records.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Millennium Project, which has among its goals improved maternal care in underserved areas, plans to use the tele medical procedures in developing countries. Dr. Dulchavsky and his team are currently working to create a highly versatile, environmentally robust device that could serve as a kind of information node connecting patients in remote areas to distant experts via Mediphan technology. Then, Dr. Dulchavsky says, “we could utilize the techniques and technologies that we developed for use on the ISS to diagnose a wide variety of medical issues, such as traumatic injury, problematic pregnancies, and certain infectious diseases.”

Last year, working at a distance with a NASA team in the Mars-like environment of Devon Island in northern Canada, Dr. Dulchavsky performed the first-ever remote guidance of a simulated appendectomy. One day, the same technique may be used to do the real thing in a village in Madagascar, on the slope of Everest, or on Mars itself.

Read more about this case study on NASA's website

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