Monthly Archives: November 2017

Butterfly IQ – Smartphone Connected Ultrasound Scanner

Traditional ultrasound scanners are rather expensive, and rarely do people own one to use at home. However, that may be about to change, as Butterfly IQ has now obtained FDA clearance for a portable ultrasound scanner that anyone can use by connecting to their smartphones.

Connecticut-based Butterfly IQ has made an innovative ultrasound scanner that uses a semiconductor chip for generating the ultrasonic signals, rather than the piezoelectric crystal transducers that traditional ultrasound machines use. The semiconductor chip based transducer is much easier to manufacture than the piezoelectric ones are.

Using the semiconductor chip makes the device much less expensive as compared to existing ultrasonic scanners. The cost of ownership comes down further as the device can operate with a smartphone and other smartphone connected devices such as the Philips Lumify device.

According to Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, founder and chairperson of Butterfly Network, this ultrasound-on-a-chip technology opens up a low-cost window for peering into the human body, allowing anyone to access high quality diagnostic imaging. With more than two-third of the population of the world without access to proper medical imaging, this effort by Butterfly is a great beginning.

FDA has cleared the device for 13 different clinical use cases. These include pediatric, urological, gynecological, cardiac, abdominal, and fetal use cases. The scanner transfers the captured imagery directly to the user’s smartphone via a chord, and the smartphone stores the images into a HIPAA-compliant cloud.

As reported by the MIT Tech Review, the chief medical officer of Butterfly Network, Dr. John Martin, was able to detect cancerous growth in his body while testing the scanner. This is an example of the potential of the low-cost ultrasound scanner.

According to Martin, the easy-to-use, powerful, healthcare providers will be able to afford the whole-body medical imaging system for less than $2,000, and it will fit in their pockets. As the price barrier comes down, Martin expects the Butterfly device to replace the stethoscope ultimately in the daily practice of medicine. The impact this technology will provide as a low-cost diagnostic system, can be gaged from the help it will offer to hundreds of thousands of women who die in childbirth, and the millions of children who die of pneumonia each year.

After perfecting the scanner, Butterfly has plans to augment its hardware capabilities with software for artificial intelligence. This will help clinicians interpret the images that the device picks up. The company expects the products with many new features to be ready for the market by 2018. At present, the device works only with iPhones.

According to the President of Butterfly IQ, Gioel Molinari, ultrasound imaging makes a perfect combination with deep learning. With more physicians using the devices in the field, the neural network models keep improving. As physicians use the Butterfly scanner regularly, they will be able to interpret the results better. This will help improve the acquiring and interpretation of the image by the artificial intelligence, which in turn, will help less skilled users to extract life-saving insight from the images captured by the Butterfly IQ ultrasound scanner on the field.

Cloud Storage and Alternatives

Ordinarily, every computer has some local memory storage capacity. Apart from the Random Access Memory or RAM, computers have either a magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state disk (SSD) to store programs and data even when power is shut off—RAM cannot hold information without power. The disk drive primarily stores the Operating System that runs the computer, other application programs, and the data these programs generate. Typically, such memory is limited and tied to a specific computer, meaning other computers cannot share it.

A user has two choices for adding more memory to a computer—he/she can either buy a bigger drive or add to the existing one, or he can use cloud storage. Various service providers offer remote memory storage, and the user has to pay a nominal rental amount for using a specific amount of cloud memory.

There are several advantages of using such remote memory. Most cloud storage services offer desktop folders where users can drag and drop files from their local storage to the cloud and vice versa. As accessing the cloud services requires Internet connection, the user can avail the cloud facilities from anywhere, while sharing it between several computers and users.

The user can use the cloud service as a back up for storing a second copy of their important information. In the event an emergency strikes and the user loses all or part of their data on their computer, accessing the cloud storage through the Internet can help to restore the stored information on the cloud. Therefore, cloud storage can act as a disaster recovery mechanism.

Compared to local memory storage, cloud services are much cheaper. Therefore, users can reduce their annual operating costs by using cloud services. Additionally, the user saves on power expenses, as cloud storage does not require the user to supply power that local memory storage would need.

However, cloud storage has its disadvantages. Dragging and dropping files to and from the cloud storage takes finite time on the Internet. This is because cloud storage services usually limit the bandwidth the user can avail for a specific rental charge. Power interruptions and or bad Internet connection during the transfer process can lead to corruption of data. Moreover, the user cannot access his/her data on the cloud storage unless there is an Internet connection available.

Storing data remotely also brings up the concerns of safety and privacy. As the remote memory is likely to be shared by other organizations, there is a possibility of data comingling.

Therefore, people prefer using private cloud services, which are more expensive, rather than using cheaper public cloud services. Private cloud services may also offer alternative payment plans, and these may be more convenient for users. Usually, the private cloud services have better software for running their services, and offer users greater confidence.

Another option private cloud services often offer is of encrypting the stored data. That means only the actual user can make use of their data, and others, even if they can access it, will see only garbage.

What is a wireless router?

Most of the electronic gadgets we use today are wireless. When they have to connect to the Internet, they do so through a device called a router, which may be a wired or a wireless one. Although wired routers were very common a few years back, wireless routers have overtaken them.

Routers, as their name suggests, direct a stream of data from one point to another or to multiple points. Usually, the source of data is the transmitting tower belonging to the broadband dealer. The connection from the tower to the router may be through a cable, a wire, or wireless. To redirect the traffic, the router may have a network of multiple Ethernet ports to which users may connect their PCs, or, as in the latest versions, it may transmit the data wirelessly. The only wire a truly wireless router will probably have is a cable to charge its internal battery.

Technically speaking, the wireless router is actually a two-way radio, receiving the signals from the tower and retransmitting them for other devices to receive. A SIM card inside the router identifies the device to the broadband company, helping it to keep track of the routers statistics. Modern wireless routers follow international wireless communication standards—the 802.11n being the latest, although there are several of the type 802.11b/g/n, meaning they conform to the earlier standards as well. Another differentiation between various routers is their operating speed, and the band on which they operate.

The international wireless communication standards define the speed at which routers operate. For instance, wireless routers of the type 802.11b are the slowest, with speeds reaching up to 11 Mbps. While those with the g suffix can deliver a maximum speed of 54 Mbps, those based on the 802.11n standard are the fastest, reaching up to 300 Mbps. However, a router can deliver data only as fast as the Internet connection allows. Therefore, even if it has a rating of n or 300 Mbps, it will perform at speeds of 100 Mbps at the most. Nonetheless, a fast wireless router can increase the speed of your network, and this allows PCs to interact faster, making them more productive.

International standards allow wireless communication on two bands—2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz. Most wireless routers based on the 802.11b, g, and n standards use the 2.4 GHz band. These are the single band routers. However, the 802.11n standard allows wireless devices to operate on the 2.4 GHz or the 5.0 GHz band also. These are the dual-band routers, which can transmit in either of the two bands via a selection switch, or in some devices, they can operate in both frequencies at the same time.

A newer standard, 802.11a, allows wireless networking on the 5.0 GHz band, while also transmitting on the 2.4 GHz band used by the 802.11b, g, and n standards. These are also dual band wireless routers with two different types of radios that support connections on both 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz bands. The 5.0 GHz band offers better performance, lower interference, and more coverage.

Blinkt! is Compatible with the Raspberry Pi

If you are interested in learning how to control RGB LEDs with the Raspberry Pi (RBPi) single board computer, Blinkt! provides a simple way to interface. Blinkt! is a strip of eight superbright RGB LED lights that you can connect to the RBPi without wires, so it is an easy way to start. Blinkt! Has a female connector that matches the male GPIO connector on the RBPi, and that allows the tiny LED board to sit atop the RBPi.

The RBPi can individually control each of the eight APA102 RGB LEDs on the Blinkt! board individually, so you can consider them as matrix of 1×8 pixels. The footprint of the board is tiny enough to allow it sit directly on top of the RBPi and the pair fits inside most of the Pi cases. Although the RBPi controls the eight LEDs with PWM, it does not interfere with the SBC’s PWM audio. Blinkt! comes fully assembled and is compatible with RBPi models 3, 2, B+, A+, Z, and ZW. Pimoroni, the manufacturers of Blinkt!, also provide a Python library for the users.

Combining Python programming and Blinkt! with the RBPi is a great way of understanding how RGB LEDs work and how a computer program controls their operation.

If you are using the RBPi3 for this project, it will already have the male GPIO on the board. However, the RBPiZ and RBPiZW may not have the connector, which means you may need to solder the connector to the board. You need to be careful when plugging the Blinkt! board onto the RBPi taking care to orient it in the right way. The Blinkt! board has rounded corners on one of its side, and this side should face the outside of the RBPi. Once you align the boards properly, push the Blinkt! board in and it should fit snugly on the RBPi.

To make the RBPi control the LEDs on the Blinkt!, it will need to have the right code. The best way to begin is to update the Operating System of the RBPi to the latest Raspbian. Once you have done this, and the RBPi is running, connect it up to the Internet and open the terminal on the RBPi screen.

Typing the code “curl https://get.pimoroni.com/blinkt | bash” without the quotes, should allow the RBPi to download the necessary Python libraries from the Pimoroni website. Now you can use the Python 3 IDLE code editor to use the library to write the Python program and control the LEDs.

While writing the Python program, you will need to begin by importing the Blinkt! library you had downloaded in the first step. Each LED is termed as a pixel so the parameter “set_pixel” allows you to address a specific LED, while “set_brightness” allows setting its brightness. The command “show” turns on the specific LED, and “clear” turns it off.

Even though the LEDs are numbered as 1 to 8 on the board, the program addresses them as 0 through 7. Therefore, the program can pick a light and tell it the color it needs to be, its brightness, and whether it should turn it on or off.