World's Smallest Imaging Device Can 3D-Scan Inside Your Blood Vessels
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World's smallest imaging device can 3D-scan inside your blood vessels:
An Australian/German team has developed the world's smallest imaging device, at the thickness of a human hair. It's capable of travelling down the blood vessels of mice, offering unprecedented abilities to 3D-scan the body at microscopic resolutions.
[...] With this breakthrough, the team has built an OCT scanning device small enough to be pushed through blood vessels in the body. This ultra-thin probe can be rotated and slowly pulled backwards to build up a 3D map of its surroundings to a depth around half a millimeter below the surface. It offers unprecedented abilities to scan the vascular system of the body for the plaques, made up of fats, cholesterol and other substances, that tend to build up in blood vessel walls and lead to heart disease.
The team performed successful tests of the device in both human and mouse blood vessels, demonstrating its ability to deliver quality OCT images and the flexibility to get where it needs to go in the body. Its precisely printed lens allows the scanner to image depths five times deeper than previous attempts, and the researchers believe this tiny probe could open up new scanning options in hard-to-reach places like the cochlea of the ear and potentially even parts of the nervous system.
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