See, heat and heal

engineers are developing technology that may enable physicians to someday use high frequency ultrasound waves to visualise the heart's interior in 3D and selectively destroy heart tissue with heat to correct arrhythmias.

"No one else has developed a way for ultrasound to combine therapy and imaging in a catheter, let alone 3D imaging," said Stephen Smith, the biomedical engineering professor who heads the project at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

Smith's group described work that developed initial laboratory prototypes in two research papers published in October 2005 in the journal "IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectronics and Frequency Control" and the journal "Ultrasonic Imaging."

Smith said his group's technique may improve on doctors' most widely used method for destroying -- or "ablating" -- aberrant tissue that makes hearts beat irregularly. That current technique employs radio waves emitted from the end of an electrode probe that touches and excessively heats tissue selected for destruction.