PhotoAcoustic imaging is an imaging modality that uses laser light and ultrasound detectors to image tissues. Photo = Light. Acoustic = Sound. The imaging uses the photoacoustic effect principle. The photoacoustic effect is not new in terms of discovery as it was reported by none other than Alexander Graham Bell (yes! Rings a bell doesn’t it?) as early as 1880. But, the unavailability of proper detectors and instruments at his time was an obstacle to expanding research in this field.
Diabetes prevalence is rapidly increasing in the world. The number of people with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Considering the size of the problem, you must all have seen or maybe used a glucose monitor. So, how does it work?
Blood glucose level is kept in check in the body by a hormone called insulin, produced by the pancreas. Unstable insulin levels in blood may cause excess glucose to be converted to fat and be deposited on your blood vessels as plaque. This may cause various complications such as cardio-vascular disease, nerve damage, kidney damage, eye damage among a lot of other complications.
Most often, people use Fitness trackers for keeping track of their fitness activity, set achievable goals and to motivate themselves. Fitness trackers are mostly wearable electronics that measure/track your activity such as steps taken, distance walked, calorie consumption and even heart rate in some cases. Most fitness trackers have an accelerometer that helps in tracking our activity. Some fitness trackers may also have altimeter, music player and many other features. So, how does the fitness tracker do it?
Watson is an IBM supercomputer named after Thomas J. Watson who led IBM into the computer era. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of computing – moving from programmable systems which have been the mainstay for the last several decades to learning systems that keep getting smarter as they process more knowledge. IBM has a business unit dedicated to transforming healthcare into a quantifiable service where every bit of information is available. It is called Watson Health and offers services in Genomics, Drug Discovery, Oncology, Imaging etc. By using it, physicians only have to go through their personalized reports instead of reading through dozens of papers for every patient’s case.
Researchers from the Universidad de los Andes in Chile have found promising results from the Umbilical Cord stem cells that could be used for non-invasive therapy. Heart failure which is marked by the heart muscle’s inability to pump blood efficiently, affects around 37 million people worldwide. Despite medical advances, half of patients diagnosed with heart failure are prone die within five years of diagnosis, according to Figueroa.
Radiotracers are chemical compounds that are used to diagnose or deliver therapy to specific organs and tissues. The radiotracer consists of a linking molecule, a binding molecule and a radioactive compound. Radiotracer is injected into the body and it binds to specific target cells in the body. The linking molecule binds the radioactive compound to the binding molecule, which then binds to specific cells in body.
The radiotracer decays by emitting ionizing radiation that damages nuclear DNA, thereby stopping division of cells (cancer as well as normal cells). Radiotracers are not something new. In fact, they have been around for 100 years !!
