TED
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2018–2024
16:51 · 297K views · Aug 24, 2018
Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrates using red light and sound to see inside the body and brain, aiming at tumor detection and neural activity measurement, and potentially a cheaper wearable MRI replacement.
HN mentions it as a reference for Openwater's approach of light-based deep tissue imaging.
4 comments from Hacker News
Mary Lou Jepsen of openwater.cc [2] has managed to image neurons and other large cell structures deep inside living bodies by phase wave interferometry and descattering signals through human tissues, even through skull and bone[1] using CMOS imageing chips, lasers, ultrasonics and holographics. A thousand times cheaper fMRI. She aims to get to realtime million pixels moving picture resolutions of around a micron. Eventually she will be able to read and write neurons or vibrate and someday maybe burn cell tissues to destruction. There are later presentations at the website where the technique is better described and visualized, but [1] is a good quick place to start and judge if you want to study their brainscanner in more depth. There are patents and a few scientific publications [3] that I'm aware of, but mostly many up to date talks with demonstrations by startup founder Mary Lou [4]. And recently she is open sourcing[5] parts of the hardware and software on github [6] so we can start building our own lab setups and improve the imageing software. [1] this video [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK] [5] [LINK] [6] [LINK]
There is a very interesting image in the article. It shows a bunch of light coming into a block and emerging as a beam. It also has a caption saying this is impossible. It struck me as very similar to the setup in this video. this video At about 4 minutes in, a nearly identical setup is shown with a beam of light emerging from a block of opaque material using holographic techniques. It seems plausible to me that a specially designed anti-moon hologram could allow reconstruction of the incident light from the sun, thus allowing a fire to be started without violating any law of thermodynamics.
Interesting to note that NIR light can penetrate deep into the body. There is research into using this as a medical imaging technique [0] and also research on improving age related vision loss [1] [0] this video [1] [LINK]
Thoughts on openwater? [LINK] Claim to use light for imaging this video There’s also the company Kernel Both companies have pretty successful founders