May the Force of the Waves be With Our Health!
A report from the Langevin Institute for Waves and Images in Paris, home to Inserm’s Accelerator of Technological Research (ART) dedicated to biomedical ultrasound. See biomedical ultrasound in action, with four examples of research currently performed at the institute!
Welcome to Inserm’s first Accelerator of Technological Research (ART)! Inaugurated in October 2016 and devoted to biomedical ultrasound, it is an unlikely setting: physicists specialized in acoustics, biologists, and clinicians rub shoulders with the engineers who help transform their ideas into new and very real technologies. "The innovations developed at the ART have been designed to be transferred to other laboratory or hospital settings," explains Mickaël Tanter*, Director of the ART and Wave Physics for Medicine team at the Langevin Institute for Waves and Images in Paris.
The research performed at this structure focuses on biomedical ultrasound, which in itself is nothing new. It is already being used in conventional Doppler ultrasound, for example. The difference here, however, is that it is used to its utmost potential. "Our researchers have, for example, developed an innovative method, called fUltrasound (functional ultrasound brain imaging), which makes it possible to visualize the small vessels of the brain and their modifications with excellent resolution in time and space, offering an efficient and complementary approach to functional MRI or positron-emission tomography, an imaging technique that rebuilds volume using slices of an object, such as the brain." Miniature brain activity imaging devices or systems for the remote delivery or activation of drugs to tumors under perfectly controlled conditions, instruments capable of treating regions of the brain without surgery, portable smart sensors to measure the body’s functional parameters, etc.
The innovations in development at the ART keep on coming and are set to revolutionize the treatment of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the neurosciences more generally, in the very near future. See biomedical ultrasound in action, with four examples of research currently performed at the institute!
*Inserm/CNRS/ESPCI/Université Denis Diderot/Université Pierre et Marie Curie Unit 979
Find the report in issue 34 of Science&Santé magazine (in French)