X PRIZE Tricorder promotional image. (via X PRIZE)
This year, 2012, marks the start of a new "X PRIZE," creating Star Trek's famous medical tricorders out of current technology. The X PRIZE foundation, along with Qualcomm, are putting up the $10 million USD for the "Tricorder X PRIZE." The foundation explained the goal of the contest, "The idea is to take advantage of the increasing power of mobile devices to make health care more accessible and easier to understand. With the equivalent of a board of physicians in your pocket, wireless sensors and imaging, you will be able to assess health and determine health care needs with a device in the palm of your hand."
Take the recent webOS based MRI system, a lot of people are close to making the device a reality. It is putting all supporting technology in one place that is key.
What may bring about the technology faster is producing Terahetz electromagnetic waves (T-rays) on a small scale. Currently, T-rays are the scanning base tech of airport scanners. With wavelength's 100 times longer than visible light, penetrating clothing (fabrics, plastics, etc) is easy. (Can also humiliate people as easily.) T-rays are already being used in medical fields.
T-rays can be used to detect increased blood flow around tumor like growths, see cancerous tumors, and even living DNA. (T-rays have relatively low photon energy compared to x-rays. So damage to tissue and DNA is low.) Some frequencies in the Terahetz band can penetrate several millimeters of tissue and even teeth.
a, Photomixer with tip-to-tip nanogap electrodes. b, Photomixer with typical interdigitated electrodes. Inset: cross-sectional schematics of the devices and the axis convention used in the simulation. (Via ASTAR)
Researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (ASTAR) in Singapore (Institute of Materials Research and Engineering), along with the Imperial College London are boasting a way to create more efficient T-rays at room temperature by creating a 100 nm gap of two metal strips on a semiconductor wafer, creating a "nano-antenna." The result were T-rays 100 times more powerful than current technology.
Right: overall antenna structure with four bias pads and a modified meander terahertz antenna design. Left: active region designs with interdigitated electrodes (top) and tip-to-tip nanogap electrodes (bottom).
Co-author of the study Stefan Maier said it best, "T-rays promise to revolutionize medical scanning to make it faster and more convenient, potentially relieving patients from the inconvenience of complicated diagnostic procedures and the stress of waiting for accurate results." See more of the study, "Greatly enhanced continuous-wave terahertz emission by nano-electrodes in a photoconductive photomixer," after the length.
At 100x the power, the new T-ray source could penetrate the entire human body. The technology exists; It will be the analysis of the resultant scans that will win the X PRIZE.
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