Flexible large-area ultrasound arrays for medical applications made using embossed polymer structures

With the huge progress in micro-electronics and artificial intelligence, the ultrasound probe has become the bottleneck in further adoption of ultrasound beyond the clinical setting (e.g. home and monitoring applications). Today, ultrasound transducers have a small aperture, are bulky, contain lead and are expensive to fabricate. Furthermore, they are rigid, which limits their integration into flexible skin patches. New ways to fabricate flexible ultrasound patches have therefore attracted much attention recently. First prototypes typically use the same lead-containing piezo-electric materials, and are made using micro-assembly of rigid active components on plastic or rubber-like substrates. We present an ultrasound transducer-on-foil technology based on thermal embossing of a piezoelectric polymer. High-quality two-dimensional ultrasound images of a tissue mimicking phantom are obtained. Mechanical flexibility and effective area scalability of the transducer are demonstrated by functional integration into an endoscope probe with a small radius of 3 mm and a large area (91.2×14 mm2) non-invasive blood pressure sensor.</p

Mouse Chromosome 3

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46995/1/335_2004_Article_BF00648421.pd

Plasma FFA utilization and FABP content are diminished in forearm skeletal muscle of type 2 diabetic subjects

In this study, we investigated the hypothesis that impairments in forearm skeletal muscle free fatty acid (FFA) metabolism are present in patients with type 2 diabetes both in the overnight fasted state and during beta-adrenergic stimulation. Eight obese subjects with type 2 diabetes and eight nonobese controls (Con) were studied using the forearm balance technique and indirect calorimetry during infusion of the stable isotope tracer [U-(13)C]palmitate after an overnight fast and during infusion of the nonselective beta-agonist isoprenaline (Iso, 20 ng. kg lean body mass(-1) x min(-1)). Additionally, activities of mitochondrial enzymes and of cytoplasmatic fatty acid-binding protein (FABP) were determined in biopsies from the vastus lateralis muscle. Both during fasting and Iso infusion, the tracer balance data showed that forearm muscle FFA uptake (Con vs. type 2: fast 449+/-69 vs. 258 +/-42 and Iso 715+/-129 vs. 398+/-70 nmol. 100 ml tissue(-1) x min(-1),