MANHASSET, NY An integrated portable ultrasound monitor designed for earlier military conflicts is helping to save lives on the battlefields in Iraq. The 5.4-pound point-of-care equipment developed by SonoSite (Bothell, WA) boots up in under 7 seconds and allows battlefield surgeons to learn if a wounded soldier is bleeding internally or if a wound contains fragments from an exploded land mine or grenade.
Using low power, high frequency sound waves for locating trauma points means the difference between life and death and saves surgeons from making invasive and sometimes unnecessary incisions.
At $20,000 to $30,000, the 13.3- x 7.6-inch equipment is lighter, faster and more rugged than traditional ultrasound machines that weigh 300 to 400 pounds, cost $150,000 to $160,000 and require a 3- to -5-minute system check before they are ready to scan.
SonoSite's platform uses four custom ASICs on a single board to replace the 10 to 20 large circuit boards and 100 ASICs usually found in traditional ultra sound machines.
The chips include a mixed signal ASIC that drives the ultrasound's transducer and receives the signal; a mixed signal chip that performs digital beam formation; a signal processing chip that executes digital signal processing once the digital beam is formed; and a back-end chip that does scan conversion.
One model, the SonoSite180, is powered by a lithium ion battery pack that can run for 2.5 hours, has a 6 1/4 -inch diagonal LCD and can withstand a 1-meter drop onto a steel plate. It performs an all-digital, high-resolution image processing across a variety of signals to enable imaging close to the skin, as well as far below the surface.
SonoSite has delivered approximately 150 units to three branches of the U.S. military including to two U.S. Navy hospital ships, the Mercy in San Diego, and the Comfort, which is on its way to the Persian Gulf, according to Ron Dickson, SonoSite's business development officer for the U.S. government.
Many of the systems deployed in Iraq are being used by what are known as "forward surgical teams" who operate just behind the front lines. In addition, SonoSite has loaned several systems to military surgeons on special assignment in Iraq in "very forward positions" to see if the systems should one day be used by medics on the front lines, Dickson said.
Under a grant from DARPA, SonoSite's parent company, ATL, created a prototype platform in 1998 in response to the U.S. armed forces request for an easy-to-use ultrasound for battlefield use. SonoSite 180 shipped in 1999. That same year SonoSite was spun out as a public company.
Upgrades have included SonoSite 180plus and the 3-pound, PDA-like iLook that launched in 2002.
The equipment is based on the VxWorks operating system rather than Windows-based due to concerns about stability and speeds, according to Blake Little, SonoSite's senior vice president of engineering. A next-generation design is under way.