VATIS UPDATE Article

A team at University of Edinburgh, the United Kingdom, led by Indian-origin scientist Kev Dhaliwal, has created a medical camera that can see through the human body, and he believes it has immense potential for doctors in tracking internal examinations. Dhaliwal believes that with this device doctors will no longer be required to exclusively rely on expensive scans and X-rays.

“It has immense potential for diverse applications, such as the one described in this work. The ability to see a device’s location is crucial for many applications in healthcare, as we move forwards with minimally invasive approaches to treating disease,” said Dhaliwal. The camera is designed to help doctors track medical tools, known as endoscopes, that are used to investigate a range of internal conditions.

The new device is able to detect sources of light inside the body, such as the illuminated tip of the endoscope’s long flexible tube. The new camera takes advantage of advanced technology that can detect individual particles of light, called photons, the team explained. Experts have integrated thousands of single photon detectors onto a silicon chip, similar to that found in a digital camera.