Like Us and Follow Us on

February 3, 2012

ARDMS Updates and Headlines in the News:

ARDMS: Important Testing Center Update

Quick Three - Dimensional Motion Capture System Developed for Imaging Muscles

Soon, 'Twinkling' Ultrasound Technology to Help Treat Kidney Stones

'Sonicated' Sperm: Could Ultrasound Be the Next Male Contraceptive?

ARDMS: Important Testing Center Update

• At the test center, you must present two current, valid signature IDs, one of which must be a non-expired government-issued photo ID with your signature; see the accepted list of IDs here.
• The name on your application must EXACTLY MATCH the name on both current, valid signature IDs.
• Jane R. Doe and Jane Rachel Doe DO NOT EXACTLY MATCH.
• Failure to present two acceptable IDs will prevent your admission to the test center. If this happens, you will be marked absent and you will forfeit the entire examination fee and seat.
• If the names do not EXACTLY MATCH, update your ARDMS name of record. 

Back To Top

Quick Three - Dimensional Motion Capture System Developed for Imaging Muscles

Current medical imaging technology misses important data regarding muscle contraction, including the ways in which a muscle's shape changes when it contracts, how the muscle bulges, and how its internal fibers become more curved ... or at least, so Simon Fraser University (SFU)'s associate professor James Wakeling tells us. In order to remedy that situation, he has developed a new method of imaging contracting muscles, that he claims should allow researchers to observe never-before-seen details of muscle activation.

The system combines ultrasound imaging, 3D motion-capture technology and - most importantly - proprietary data-processing software. Together, these technologies are able to scan and capture three-dimensional maps of muscle tissue within just 90 seconds. Conventional methods take up to 15 minutes to do the same thing, which is too long to expect a test subject to be able to hold a contraction.

Wakeling hopes that the SFU system could be used to improve muscle models used in musculoskeletal simulation software, particularly as it applies to predicting the outcome of orthopedic surgeries such as tendon transfers in children with cerebral palsy.

View the article online.

Article written by staff at gizmag.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.

Back To Top

Soon, "Twinkling' Ultrasound Technology to Help Treat Kidney Stones

A new ultrasound technology could soon help in overcoming a number of medical care challenges associated with kidney stone treatment, researchers say.

The new technology by scientists with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) detects stones with advanced ultrasound imaging based on a process called “Twinkling Artifact” and provides treatment by “pushing” the stone with focused ultrasound.

This technology could not only be beneficial for health care in space, but could also alter the treatment of kidney stones on Earth.

“We have a diagnostic ultrasound machine that has enhanced capability to image kidney stones in the body,” said Dr. Michael Bailey, a principal engineer at APL-UW.

“We also have a capability that uses ultrasound waves coming right through the skin to push small stones or pieces of stones toward the exit of the kidney, so they will naturally pass, avoiding surgery.”

Currently on Earth, the preferred removal method is for patients to drink water to encourage the stones to pass naturally, but this does not always work, and surgery is often the only option.

In space, the threat from kidney stones is greater due to the difficulty of keeping astronauts fully hydrated. Another factor is that bones demineralize in the reduced-gravity environment of space, dumping salts into the blood and eventually into the urine.

The elevated concentration of salts in the urine is a risk factor for stones.

Crum, who is a principal physicist at APL-UW, said kidney stones could be a serious problem on a long-duration mission.

“We want to prepare for this risk by having a readily available treatment, such as pushing the stone via ultrasound,” Crum said.

Before a stone can be pushed, it needs to be located. Standard ultrasound machines have a black and white imaging mode called B-mode that creates a picture of the anatomy.

They also have a Doppler mode that specifically displays blood flow and the motion of the blood within tissue in color.

In Doppler mode a kidney stone can appear brightly colored and twinkling. The reason for this is unknown, but Crum and Bailey are working to understand what causes the Twinkling Artifact image.

“At the same time, we have gone beyond Twinkling Artifact and utilized what we know with some other knowledge about kidney stones to create specific modes for kidney stones,” Bailey said.

“We present the stone in a way that looks like it is twinkling in an image in which the anatomy is black and white, with one brightly colored stone or multiple colored stones.”

Once the stones are located, the ultrasound machine operator can select a stone to target, and then, with a simple push of a button, send a focused ultrasound wave, about half a millimeter in width, to move the stone toward the kidney’s exit.

The stone moves about one centimeter per second. In addition to being an option to surgery, the technology can be used to “clean up” after surgery.

The ultrasound technology being developed for NSBRI by Crum and Bailey is not limited to kidney stone detection and removal. The technology can also be used to stop internal bleeding and ablate (or destroy) tumors.

View the article online.

Article written by staff at truthdive.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.

Back To Top

'Sonicated' Sperm: Could Ultrasound Be the Next Male Contraceptive?

Condoms aren’t foolproof, and vasectomies may be too much so. Now researchers say they’re working on another contraceptive option for men that offers them more flexibility and control over their fertility. It’s based on ultrasound.

Using sound waves in medicine isn’t new — obstetricians rely on them to take noninvasive pictures of a developing fetus, and cancer doctors use them to image tumors hidden deep in the body. Physical therapists employ ultrasound to heal damaged muscles. Now new data on rats shows that exposing testes to ultrasound can shut down sperm production — which could lead to an effective contraceptive.

James Tsuruta, an assistant professor of pediatrics at University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and his colleagues report in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology that commonly used doses of ultrasound can lower rats’ sperm concentrations to 3 million per milliliter of semen; experts define low sperm counts in men as anything less than 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen.

“When we treated the rats in the study, it only took two weeks to shut down a process that is essential to the survival of any species,” said Tsuruta. “Males produce millions of sperm every day. So it’s a very, very robust system. To be able to turn that off — we are really excited to learn how this actually works.”

Ultrasound generates heat by physically vibrating tissues with sound waves — similar to the way that microwave energy shakes up water molecules to heat up food. But the sound waves may also be working at a deeper level to change the tissues they affect; Tsuruta said when he compared rat testes exposed to ultrasound to testes heated to the same temperature without ultrasound, the ultrasound-treated testes showed a 10 times greater drop in sperm concentration.

Research by other scientists suggests that ultrasound may disrupt the proteins in cells and even their gene expression, leading to alterations in the way these cells work. “Ultrasound can definitely change [the cells’] state,” he said. “So to learn whether any of these things are happening if we use ultrasound as contraceptive is going to need future studies.”

In the study, the rats’ testes were exposed to high frequency ultrasound at 3 MHz for 15 minutes each, two days apart. The sessions were enough to kill the existing sperm in the testes and stop the development of additional sperm. The first study to look at the effect of ultrasound on sperm production, in the 1970s, showed that the depletion was temporary, and Tsuruta hopes his studies will show the same result.

Why the need for zapping sperm? In the U.S., 70% of couples use some form of contraception, with the vast majority relying on female methods, including the birth control pill. Only a quarter of men use condoms or have a vasectomy, which means 75% don’t use any method to control their fertility. There are probably some women out there who’d like to see the balance shift.

So far, the technique has too many unknowns to be tested safely in people. The only men to undergo ultrasound of their testes — not to test its effectiveness, but only to test its feasibility — were prostate cancer patients who were scheduled for castration to remove tumors in the 1970s. These men reported that the ultrasound treatment was tolerable and didn’t cause them any pain.

If Tsuruta’s results hold, and the technique proves safe, Tsuruta says ideally men would go to a clinic for treatments that last about six months or so. But there is a lot more that scientists have to learn about ultrasound and its effect on fertility before that happens. “We need to do more studies to be sure that a man can use this over and over again, and that when he does decide to father children, there is no problem at all,” he said.

In the meantime, Tsuruta stresses that the procedure isn’t something you should try at home, despite the fact that commercial ultrasound machines are available online and men are apparently purchasing them for this purpose. “I get emails asking me what conditions men should use,” Tsuruta said. “This is really not something you should do at home because we don’t know nearly enough about its safety and reversibility and what other effects there might be long term.”

View the article online.

Article written by staff at healthland.time.com and adapted for the purposes of this newsletter.

Back To Top