Portable medical scanners built to interface with cellphones

by Darren Murph, posted May 2nd 2008 at 6:10AM

You know those elephant-sized medical scanners? Totally amazing machines, sure, but things like that aren't apt to be shipped into obscure jungles throughout Africa. Thankfully, a team of researchers have developed something that could bring medical scanning to an even larger chunk of the world: a real live Tricorder. Of course, it's not really going by that moniker, but the diminutive scanner is able to interface with a cellphone via USB and utilize its 3G / WiFi access to send raw scan data to servers and receive images back. Granted, you won't get any high-resolution viewing from your average mobile, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.