11 replies to this topic

[Jose_LER]

I've thought some time ago about a machine to study aging and diseases based on a imaging device that would be able to show specifici information about the body.

 

The idea is to study chemical changes in the body, so the technique would be as follows:

 

1. The researcher wants to find the information in the body about Calcium Phosphate (for example).

In this case, Calcium Phosphate is the element number 415 in the computer's database.

 

 

2. The machine scans the body to find the distribution of that element and returns to the computer the information about that compound. The final picture would be like a X-Ray format. The main difference is that the white areas show the parts in the body where calcium phosphate is. The other different chemicals are hidden from the picture.

 

 

It exists something like that?

Edited by Jose_LER, 24 August 2014 - 10:03 AM.

[YOLF]

I imagine something like this could be done with current technologies, though it would be a little more low tech. For instance, there is a dermally applied ramen spectrometer that is worn as a watch... it could be adapted to something like this. I imagine it would be a little limited.

 

[Jose_LER]

I imagine something like this could be done with current technologies, though it would be a little more low tech. For instance, there is a dermally applied ramen spectrometer that is worn as a watch... it could be adapted to something like this. I imagine it would be a little limited.

 

Have you any link about the raman dermal spectrometer?
 

[niner]

 

I imagine something like this could be done with current technologies, though it would be a little more low tech. For instance, there is a dermally applied ramen spectrometer that is worn as a watch... it could be adapted to something like this. I imagine it would be a little limited.

 

Have you any link about the raman dermal spectrometer?

 

Wikipedia probably has an article on Raman spectroscopy; just google it.

 

As for finding elements, that's a little harder.  Element signature absorptions are generally in the x-ray range, so this would fall under the category of x-ray spectroscopy.  Most of these methods are not particularly compatible with living organisms.  There is a technique called Dual Energy X-ray Absorptimetry, usually known as the DEXA Scan, that is used to measure bone mineral density and is very safe.  It is not, however, an imaging method, rather it's a spot measurement.

[Jose_LER]

 

 

I imagine something like this could be done with current technologies, though it would be a little more low tech. For instance, there is a dermally applied ramen spectrometer that is worn as a watch... it could be adapted to something like this. I imagine it would be a little limited.

 

Have you any link about the raman dermal spectrometer?

 

Wikipedia probably has an article on Raman spectroscopy; just google it.

 

As for finding elements, that's a little harder.  Element signature absorptions are generally in the x-ray range, so this would fall under the category of x-ray spectroscopy.  Most of these methods are not particularly compatible with living organisms.  There is a technique called Dual Energy X-ray Absorptimetry, usually known as the DEXA Scan, that is used to measure bone mineral density and is very safe.  It is not, however, an imaging method, rather it's a spot measurement.

 

 

So at the day there is not method that can accomplish the requirement (if any knows one, post it here).

 

The most similar thing I know is a technique that only works on metals called phase discrimination. It has been used in devices for searching metals, like in the beach. Each metals has its different phase so the machine can discriminate between different metals.

 

The obstacle here is to identify any chemical spectral signature inside the body, not only on surface.
 

[YOLF]

I saw a promising technology using T waves a while back. I'm not really sure how safe it would be, but it can identify just about anything...

[YOLF]

As I see this again, I think it's a good idea for understanding systems biology. I may have misunderstood the first time that I viewed this. I think what you're talking about is plotting the density of a particular molecule so you can see at what frequency it will affect a given system. This is actually an awesome idea. I hope it's not too old for someone to pick up on. Are you still interested? Is that a good understanding of what you wanted to do?

[Jose_LER]

As I see this again, I think it's a good idea for understanding systems biology. I may have misunderstood the first time that I viewed this. I think what you're talking about is plotting the density of a particular molecule so you can see at what frequency it will affect a given system. This is actually an awesome idea. I hope it's not too old for someone to pick up on. Are you still interested? Is that a good understanding of what you wanted to do?

I mean to graphically isolate the chemical we are looking for. Imagine, like a white and black photo, where white pixels means detected and black pixels mean not detected.

 

You specify in the program which chemical or combination of chemicals are you looking for. Then, an electromagnetic field interacts with the matter to reveal where, in how quantity the substance is.

[Jose_LER]

There is a radio technology that claims that it can detect the presence of specific chemicals in the body. I have the plans in a book.

 

The idea (if I remember well), is that each chemical has inductance and also capacitance properties, so it can be like a LC circuit (like the radio). The author claims that you can "tune" to the frequency of that chemical and "ear" it. It's not a graphical method, but it's a place to start.

 

I don't know if that is true or not, but the circuit seems easy to replicate and we could build it and see the results (if any).

[Jose_LER]

I have also to say that I am studying Machine Learning. It's a very poweful tool to detect and find patterns within the data. Maybe you have heard about R language or Matlab.

[YOLF]

It is possible to detect things. I know metal detectors can give you an idea of what metal you're looking at before you start digging. There are other examples of similar technologies. 

 

Have you studied enough of this technology to know how to start building something like this?

 

Perhaps it could be done in two parts with what I thought it was and what you were thinking and then combined.

 

What are you saying we do with machine learning? Learn what can be detected or isolated in the signal and apply various algorithms to further extend our view?

[Jose_LER]

Of course, metal detector can detect metals and there is a technique to detect WHAT kind of metal is. I think it's something called "phase discriminator". Different metals have different characteristics in the phase.

 

I have only read that technology in a book a lot of years ago. My experience in electronics is very little, so I'm not experienced in electronics. I have the plans, so it will be easy for a person that has experience in electronics. The circuit is simple. It's not very sophisticated.

 

This device I explained in the last post (the one that is like a radio), seems to work by "detecting frequencies". I mean, in an ordinary radio you can tune a specific frequency by varying the capacitance of the capacitor. So, you can select a specific frequency (remember that a LC circuit has a natural resonant frequency). The device I found in the book works in a similar way. The theory is that the chemicals emit frequencies and those frequencies can be tuned. If you tune one chemical frequency and you detect activity on that frequency, it means that the chemical is present in your body. If you tune another frequency and you cannot detect nothing, it means that there is not such chemical present in your body or the amount of the chemical is extremely small so it cannot be detected with that device (maybe with another of a higher precision?).

 

The capacitor basically helps to block undesired frequencies and allow passing one frequency that we are interested in. It's like a filter. For that reason, you move the capacitor in analog radios. In this device would be something similar.

 

Machine learning is a field related with artificial intelligence. Basically, machine learning is used to discover and detect patterns within data. It's something like statistical discovery. You feed a computer with huge amounts of data, and the algorithms can detect patterns in that data. Maybe is you feed a computer with a bunch of unknow signals, the computer analyzes them and it can discover knowledge in that data. It's like computer vision... in CV basically you are feeding a software with numbers (from zero to 255) and the computer automatically recognizes shapes, colours, etc... with or without human help.

 

Some years ago Google performed an experiment where a computer learnt by itself, to learn what is a cat by seeing tons of youtube videos. No human ever said that there was a thing called a cat. The computer learnt to recognize itself, feeding the computer with lots of videos. That would be machine learning. It can be applied to anything that produces data. In our case, biological radio signals.

 

It's well known that when a disease or aging exists in the body, the electronic biological bandwidth gets narrow. Other researchers defend the idea that biology is about electricity and frequencies. When a disease is present, the frequencies varies because there is a change in chemical patterns.