You Can Take Selfies Of Your Aorta With This Mini Camera

Scientific studies of selfies have yielded interesting insights on personalities, gender differences, and national moods, but scientist F. Levent Degertekin has invented a new camera that can provide high-def, 3-D images of your innards.

This “camera” uses ultrasound imaging techniques to create real-time, volumetric images of occlusions in arteries, but it’s built more like a miniature drum cymbal than a SLR. A donut-shaped silicon chip with a 1.5 millimeter diameter and 460 micron hole in the center houses sensing and transmitting circuitry and serves as the base of the diminutive device. A thin film on top of it flutters 0.00005 of a millimeter, creating sound waves which are captured by an array of 100 sensors on the chip, processed, and transmitted to an external video monitor at a rate of 60 frames per second via 13 gossamer cables that are threaded through a catheter.

Though it’s roughly the size of a grain of uncooked quinoa, the images it produces are able to replace two people in the surgical theater. Prior to the invention of this speck-sized sensor, technicians would pore over lower-fidelity cross-sectional images and guide the surgeon verbally while she held the patient’s life in her hands. Degertekin likens his little invention to a flashlight that illuminates the obstructions in a blood vessel, giving doctors a direct look at what they’re up against.