The World's 1st Cell Phone Based Ultrasound Machine

The World's 1st Cell Phone Based Ultrasound Machine
Learn on yet another successful integration of our products
Story Highlights
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) have developed a line of low-cost USB based ultrasound probes which are connected to Windows CE/windows mobile-based smart phones. Computer engineers at the Washington University in St. Louis were given the challenge to develop a portable, mobile, low-power imaging platform using a standard USB-based ultrasound probe and a Smartphone running Windows CE. David Zar, a research associate in computer science and engineering, wanted to speed up the porting process/driver development without compromising performance (due to the performance constraints of the CE-based smart phone).

WinDriver™ provided a user-friendly tool that enabled easy, user-mode development of USB drivers running under Windows CE, while meeting the performance requirements of the ultrasound imaging software.



Details

William D. Richard, Ph.D., WUSTL associate professor of computer science and engineering, and David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering, develop pioneering low cost ultrasound imaging systems. Their latest achievement marks a new milestone in bringing important technology to the commodity shelf.

"75% of the world population have no access to medical imaging or trained medical professionals. Eliminating the bulky, cabinet sized, power hungry ultrasound imaging devices greatly improves the availability of this much needed medical imaging technology, improving patients' quality of life" said William Richard, he continued: "Since 90% of the world's population lives within the range of a cell tower, providing a low cost, portable, imaging system, that doesn't require a regular power supply, answers a great need"

The software provided with the system lets local caregivers evaluate the images. Alternatively, they can be sent for a specialist's examination, remotely. The application allows full control and manipulation of the ultrasound image.

WUSTL's ultrasound system and SDK provides a valuable tool for diagnosing numerous diseases and medical conditions, especially in remote or impoverished locations when a full sized ultrasound device is unavailable. Furthermore, their open SDK allows third-party ultrasound developers to tailor the technology to specific tasks.

WUSTL solution comprises hardware and software:

  • Probe (modified for low power consumption)
  • Application (modified to run on small/touch screen on a commercial WinCE-based Smartphone). This application, written in C# and C++, was programmed with the Jungo WinDriver-based driver and its unique data streaming APIs. The streaming API allows sending continuous streams of data from the ultrasound device, despite the modest capabilities and performance of the mobile phone platform.

"I was already using Jungo's WinDriver USB for XP/Vista 32/64 bit support so it was natural to try the Windows CE support, also. This saved us enormous effort as we didn't have to do very much development to get the low-level functionality of our application working. Furthermore, the Jungo support team provided excellent support" said David Zar, he continued: "Having converted to the Jungo driver, I can support 32/64 bit Vista as well as Windows CE devices with a single codebase".

Washington University is located in St. Louis, MO USA.
David M. Zar, Research Associate in the Computer Science and Engineering, can be contacted at:
Phone: 314-935-4876 dzar@wustl.edu


About Jungo
Jungo Ltd., an NDS Group company, is a provider of broadband home value-added service solutions. Jungo's flagship products, OpenRG™ (residential gateway software platform) and OpenSMB™ (small and medium business gateway software platform) enable broadband operators to deliver managed revenue-generating services to the digital home.

Jungo also offers a variety of connectivity software solutions for USB and PCI. These include WinDriver™, a driver development toolkit that enables developers to create custom device drivers that can run on a multitude of operating systems without modification. DriverCore™ offers standard USB drivers, allowing device manufacturers to expose a variety of native communication interfaces via USB to different operating systems and platforms. USBware™ is a complete, high quality and small footprint embedded USB software protocol stack, allowing device manufacturers to incorporate standard USB connectivity easily in their designs. MediaCore™ enables automotive infotainment systems manufacturers to integrate a complete hardware and media access, control and streaming infrastructure into their products.

To find out more about Jungo, visit http://www.jungo.com/.



Jungo Sales Department:
Phone: 1-877-514-0537 (USA) or +972-74-721-2223 (Worldwide)
Fax: 972-74-721-2122
Email: sales@jungo.com