Life-Saving 3D Ultrasound Tech - Cool Stuff: How It Works - S01 EP05 - Science Documentary
on this episode of cool stuff what's more amazing than the human body this is so bizarre The Secret of human Bionics this artificial knee can think for itself king of the world then to Save a Life we're headed deep inside a living patient Richard what's the temperature it's medicine's version of The Big Chill but this freezer works from the inside this device is is a true innovation in terms of being able to cool the brain quickly and safely and the technology that's revealing our most precious organ how 3D ultrasound is replacing a scalpel giving doctors a home video that could very well save your life this is truly like having the heart on your hands and I'm getting my palm red but it's not to see into my future it's for my identity just like that second and a half as quick as a handshake as precise's DNA it's got about 300 times the size of information as a fingerprint the Palm secure even distinguishes identical twins [Music] how come I'm not feeling any heat and I want to know how it works I'll be riding the Leading Edge of innovation pulling apart Today's Hottest Technologies and presenting them in ways you've never imagined join me on a journey into the Hidden World of cool stuff sure we're all humans but the more science explores our bodies the more differences it's finding that's just as well for lots of reasons but in the security business it's opening up a whole new world of biometric profiling where your body becomes your key fingerprints we're all familiar with they've set the biometric standard for a century but with today's technology all those loops and whirls of my skin can be copied if someone's determined enough to steal my identity of security is going deeper to a part of our bodies I never even thought about [Music] I'm in Fujitsu just south of San Francisco to test out their security system that actually reads the veins in your hand we'll give it a try access denied please try again okay work so far it doesn't recognize my hand so I don't get past first base but systems manager Joel Hagberg is going to sneak me through security to show me how it works and the Palm secure product is vascular based security it's inside your body so it's very hard for someone to be able to do quit or copy it because it's inside it's just inside your hand so this is not only The Cutting Edge this is the end-all be-all this is this is one of the next great secure products for the future the Palm secure is looking past my fingerprints past the creases in my palm and deep into my vascular system registration complete it does this by using near infrared light it passes through my skin and is reflected back to this sensor so it comes up hits your hand the blue veins that are taking the blood back to your heart actually absorb the new infrared signal the rest of the signals bounce back to the camera and it takes a pattern works every time sure as long as you're in the system so it's seeing my veins not my arteries that's because near infrared is only absorbed by Blue Blood as we know arteries carry bright red blood full of oxygenated hemoglobin to every inch of our bodies but once the oxygen is used up our blue blood makes its way back to the Heart by a different pathway and that's what the Palm secure sees a detailed pattern unique to every individual just like the branches of the tree according to Joel the veins in my palm are far more secure than my fingerprints okay it's got about 300 times the size of information as a fingerprint so you think of the complexity of the vein pattern in your hand it's much more complex than a simple fingerprint pattern so it's a much higher level of security it's my unique code and just as no two trees are identical in every branch and Twig no one has my vein pattern we've tested it with a wide range of population many sets of identical twins and identical twins have similar Iris similar fingerprint but unique vein pattern in their hand because it's what's inside that counts and that means not even Cuts scars or aging can screw up the system it's quick painless and pretty cool access granted yeah just like that now you're live in the system can I access try to go and see if I can actually access sure we can go to the front door you can take a walk into our building Fujitsu say the chances of a misread are one in a million that's why Japanese Banks already use the Palms secure at more than 3 000 of their ATMs okay well let's log in as a guest all right go ahead and try assist Grant this is the sort of palm reading I can really believe it [Applause] brain surgery even with the best physicians and Facilities it's delicate and it's dangerous but there's one Cutting Edge technique that's improving a patient's odds of survival Richard what's the temperature cold hypothermia is the absolute best protective agent we have against injury in the brain low temperatures make our bodies sluggish we don't just feel lethargic our inner chemical workings also known as our metabolism actually slow down in the cold and because our brain is a chemical hot house the less activity the less chance of brain damage a story about a young boy that had fallen through a frozen lake and had essentially drowned and he was submerged for about 45 minutes and The Rescuers pulled him out and they resuscitated him and he was fine he had no damage to his brain [Music] though back was inspired by that newspaper story and decided to invent a machine that caused hypothermia and this patient is about to feel its benefits he has a cerebral aneurysm a weakened blood vessel in his brain that could be fatal surgeon Gary Steinberg needs to fix it fast and the old method of cooling is just too hit and miss the reason we don't simply pack the patient in ice or use a cooling blanket on the surface is because it's not efficient what we found is that obese patients or patients with a large body mass did not cool down very quickly and we couldn't control the cooling but the inner cool gives Steinberg ultimate control it's an exceptionally designed catheter that uses cold saline solution to cool his patients from the inside all right yeah and here's how it works a gold medal tip is inserted through the groin into the femoral vein this is effectively a highway to the patient's heart and the Heart Is intercool's Final Destination that's because the heart will pump the cold blood around the body but getting a 10 inch metal shaft through a patient's femoral vein requires some cool engineering gold is a great thermal conductor but it also needs to be Supple enough to snake its way through the femoral vein the way we did that was by taking a piece of metal and putting these little what are called Bellows these little ribs in it and they're actually flexible and by having these little segments here that are flexible the metal the whole metal tip becomes very flexible the cool design doesn't stop there the grooves are specially designed to move through the blood very gently remember blood is really a soup of blood cells and they damage easily finally the catheter reaches the inferior vena cava a one inch diameter vein inside the heart that retrieves used blood from our bodies foreign cold saline is pumped into the catheter right up to the gold tip the heart does the rest pumping cool blood around the body and dropping the patient's core temperature to induce hypothermia Dr Steinberg lowers his patient's core temperature of 98.6 degrees by 10 percent our thermal camera shows the patient's brain as a cool blue it took intercool just 20 minutes now surgery can start from here it's up to Dr Steinberg as he repairs his patient's weakened blood vessel and saves his life the whole time our thermal camera shows the patient staying at the perfect temperature in manageable hypothermia when surgery is done a flick of a switch turns inner cool into inner warmth heated saline is pumped through the system and the patient gradually warms up a successful operation brain surgery will always be a risky business but today intercool is reducing some of those risks this device is is a true innovation in terms of being able to cool the brain quickly and safely and in that sense it will revolutionize I believe the way we practice certain types of neurosurgery October 3rd 1993 Mogadishu Somalia we're all familiar with the infamous Black Hawk Down incident no one is closer to the events of that day than 44 year old U.S special forces veteran Brad Hawley a Purple Heart recipient Ryan see ya he lost his left leg when his Chopper went down for years Brad's walked with a conventional prosthetic limb but in 2006 he swapped it for the world's first Power knee nowadays brat doesn't reminisce much about his experience on the battlefield that you don't talk about what happened to you like do you uh not too often other than to say that it was you know it was a combat injury and it's hit by a rock-papel grenade much rather talk about the cool new technology in his power knee from the labs of the oser corporation this is 10 pounds worth of state-of-the-art prosthetic Wizardry closest we've come to a bionic limb in my opinion they're the million dollar joints atosur Corporation I was pretty Keen to find out how this amazing artificial leg worked and Asura's head of Prosthetics Ian father Gill was happy to demonstrate the power knee is the first knee that generates positive power so we have the possibility when we bend the knee of it actually to straighten itself back out it actually has a motor in there and it's driving it into a bent and straight position powered by 42 volt Lithium Polymer batteries the tiny but incredibly strong electric motors inside can Propel a 265 pound person it generates as much torque as much power as as the normal human quadriceps and hamstring muscles but the power knee can also think for itself it's onboard computer holds a huge database on human locomotion but here's the really clever feature pressure sensors under the heel and Toes of the intact foot detect what sort of stride is being taken [Music] status is sent to an ankle strap transmitter that in turn sends a wireless Bluetooth signal to the power knees waiting microprocessors [Music] they interpret the data and tell the motors how to power the knee through its next step and each power knee is programmed personally for every user it would start off by installing a database of information on the knee that incorporated the body weight the height the side of amputation of the user and then we would go through each setting one by one personalizing it so they felt it was in symmetry with their Locomotion I wonder how it would feel walking with one of these potentially you can try the powerny on yourself or I want to do it definitely I'm powered up and ready to go good that's a good start it's more difficult than I thought it's me it's not it it's me but I'm starting to get the hang of my extra legs incredible power assisted step this is so bizarre but it's working what I really want to test out is Father Gill's claim that the power knee is the first prosthetic device ever to power a user upstairs so rapidly in their abilities but first some fine tuning to check the symmetry of my stride I'm tagged with infrared reflectors so the computer can track how evenly I'm walking what we're trying to do is evaluate symmetry from left side to right to see how the knees moving in conjunction with the rest of your body so when I'm programming the knee I can use this kind of data to actually help me evaluate your gate and actually update the settings on the knee so that they can be a little bit a little bit improved from where we are just now now the stairs forward toe step very close just trying to get a little bit more fluid the more fluid it is the better the clearer the signals it's amazing the leg is sensing how I point my toe and it's incredibly strong motor Powers my artificial Lake into the air up the stairs that is so cool king of the world king of the world you made it up how about that now can I get down each power Knee will set you back one hundred thousand dollars it's a far cry from traditional prosthetic limbs their major disadvantage is the wear and tear on joints and muscles simply because the body has to lift it every step not so with the power knee but when I first got it uh it's it felt as if I was constantly uh fighting the power because uh I was so used to voluntary control now that Brad has adjusted to his power knee his body is really feeling the benefits there's no work at the hip there's no lower back strain trying to get up over the prosthesis super Prosthetics are here above the knee amputees like Brad already have the power need who knows bionic fingers legs and Toes may become the everyday appendage for the one in 200 Americans who've lost a limb there's nothing quite like seeing your child's first baby picture months before birth we've had 30 years to get used to 2D ultrasound images the science of seeing the sound now very cool 3D ultrasound techniques are revolutionizing medicine this is a major advancement you're not penetrating the body in any way and you can get these fantastic pictures just by using sound waves on the surface of your chest [Music] more importantly 3D ultrasound is saving lives Mr Johnson has a heart defect five years ago he received an artificial heart valve that probably saved his life [Music] now Physicians are afraid it might be leaking blood Dr Roberto Lang wants to find out without resorting to the scalpel an ultrasound image is helpful but a 3D ultrasound is that much better the surgeon can look at the valve exactly in the same manner as he or she will encounter at the time of surgery they can mentally practice what type of operation they're going to do the next day on a patient this is truly like having the heart on your hands Mr Johnson's suspect valves examined simply by placing a transducer on his chest instantly Dr Lang sees an accurate three-dimensional picture of a living beating heart he can even see how the blood is flowing through Mr Johnson's valve now you see here the the color going through that valve looks really really good and you see the three struts this is excellent excellent beautiful pictures here we're getting of your heart so how does 3D ultrasound work it combines two-dimensional picture slices of body organs obtained by conventional 2D ultrasound techniques every second millions of high frequency sound pulses Way Beyond human hearing are blasted through the body the reflected Echoes are detected and analyzed to build a sound picture of any soft or fluid-filled organ within its range 3D ultrasound goes one step further by capturing several 2D images from different angles and combining them using the computer's specialized software [Music] then as a 3D composite image it can be rotated at any angle and we're going to see the blood going through there we can see now the the turbulence as the blood goes through this artificial valve the smoothness of the blood flow through Mr Johnson's heart valve is immediately apparent blood under pressure starts off blue then turns red as turbulence builds in the valve in this case the absence of turbulence means the artificial valve is working perfectly no leak in sight the news is good the size of your heart is normal the way your heart is pumping is only slightly reduced but we can make you feel better with some medication it's a diagnostic godsend and today 3D ultrasound transducers have been miniaturized to the point that they can be used inside the body during surgery this little Imaging sensor here has the equivalent of a hundred of these boards right here all miniaturized into the size of a dime the new 3D version has 25 times the processing power producing a far clearer picture with height depth and breadth and it's small enough to slide down your throat it actually goes down the food pipe and actually sits right behind the Heart during heart surgery nestled in the esophagus the miniature ultrasound probe provides the physician with a close-up detailed image of the heart without getting in the way of the surgeon's scalpel [Music] of patients like Mr Johnson can now be super accurately assessed without drawing a single drop of blood looks normal it really there's no leakages around the valve like thousands of other patients he can trust in the new technology and breathe easy [Music] technology merges ever closer with flesh and blood it's hard to improve on nature but we could certainly give it a helping hand by cooling the blood to give us the best chance of survival by Imaging live organs in amazing detail and by building artificial limbs that are almost as good as the real thing see you next time on cool stuff foreign [Music]
2023-11-11 06:48
