Piezoelectric materials represent an important class of materials known for their ability to generate electrical charge under mechanical deformation. Due to these properties, piezoelectric ceramics play an important role in the development of real-time and continuous monitoring systems in biomedical applications.
Dağdeviren and colleagues investigated the potential of a conformal ultrasound patch developed using Sm/La doped Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 ceramics in the biomedical field. The patch provides mechanically robust, conformal and in vivo volumetric organ monitoring, especially for bladder monitoring. They show that phased arrays provide superior properties compared to conventional piezoelectric ceramics and can be used for real-time and continuous monitoring of various biomedical and healthcare applications. The performance of the patch in estimating bladder volume was found to be comparable to standard clinical ultrasound equipment, even without the use of ultrasound gel. In addition, it has been shown to provide accurate and reproducible imaging on different phantoms with and without ultrasound gel.
The study also expands the understanding of soft tissue disorders by highlighting the potential for using ultrasound technology for monitoring various soft tissues and deep organs. The research findings pioneer the development of wearable ultrasound devices with clinical and health monitoring applications. The research highlights that the cUSB-Patch is a safe and effective option for imaging the bladder in human samples. The experiment, conducted on 20 people who met certain criteria and had a body mass index between 18.19-27.98 kg/m², was approved by an institutional review board. The study showed that the cUSB-Patch elicited a low probability of harmful biological effects despite its low thermal index levels. It also provides information on the measurement and calculation of bladder volume by comparing the cUSB-Patch with a standard ultrasound probe. The operational procedures, imaging techniques and data analysis methods used during the experiments are described in detail. In addition, image intensities measured on the corresponding gel and gel-free images are compared to determine the performance of different acoustic coupling environments. The acoustic loss value was scaled according to the image dynamic range and could be iteratively adjusted to match the thresholded gel image brightness to the corresponding gel-free image brightness due to the non-Gaussian distribution and nonlinear behavior of the thresholding. It has been shown that this feature helps to significantly improve the accuracy and consistency of estimates in ultrasound imaging used to estimate bladder volume.
Consequently the conformal ultrasound patch developed by Dağdeviren and colleagues has the potential to provide an effective monitoring system in biomedical applications by utilizing the unique properties of piezoelectric ceramics. This study offers a new perspective on the potential to expand the understanding of soft tissue disorders and how piezoelectric materials can be utilized in various applications in the biomedical field and provides a foundation for future research.
Author: Zeynep Bulut
Editor: Elif Duymaz
Reference: Lin Z., Colin M., Dabin L., David M., Scott Joseph J., Theodore T. P, Viksit K., Sara V. F., David H., Qian L., Ikra Iftekhar S., David S., Wenya D., Hannah E., Li J., Weiguo L., Yonina C. E., Fei L., Anantha P. C., Anthony E. S. & Canan D. (2023). A conformable phased-array ultrasound patch for bladder volume monitoring. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-01101-z
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