Sealing up the lungs

Engineers at the University of Washington  have created a 'Star-Trek style' tricorder device that can seal punctured lungs using ultrasound.

The high-intensity ultrasound beams from the new unit focus on a particular spot inside the body on the patient's lungs. Focusing the ultrasound beams creates a tiny but extremely hot spot about the size and shape of a grain of rice. The rays heat the tissue and blood cells until they form a seal. Yet the tissue between the device and the spot being treated does not get hot, as it would with a laser beam.

'No one has ever looked at treating lungs with ultrasound before,' said Shahram Vaezy, a UW associate professor of bioengineering.

Indeed, physicists were sceptical that the idea would work at all, because a lung is essentially a collection of air sacs, and air blocks transmission of ultrasound. But now, experiments have shown that punctures on the lung's surface, where injuries usually occur, can be healed with ultrasound therapy.