A flexible, elastic ultrasonography patch was created by engineers at the University of California, San Diego that may be worn on the skin to track blood flow through significant arteries and veins located deep within a person's body.
To diagnose various cardiovascular conditions, such as blood clots, heart valve issues, poor circulation in the limbs, or blockages in the arteries that could result in strokes or heart attacks, clinicians must be aware of how quickly and how much blood flows through a patient's blood vessels.
With the novel ultrasound patch created by UC San Diego, blood flow, blood pressure, and cardiac function can all be continuously tracked in real time. A team led by Sheng Xu, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, reported the patch in a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
You can wear the patch on your chest or neck. The patch is unique in that it can non-invasively detect and quantify cardiovascular impulses up to 14 centimetres deep inside the body. And it is really accurate in doing so. "This type of wearable device can give you a more comprehensive, more accurate picture of what's going on in deep tissues and critical organs like the heart and the brain, all from the surface of the skin," said Xu.