Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#21

Post by concrete_head »

KaiserPro wrote: post #15
pcrh wrote: post #3

There's a risk of echos of Theranos here. A paper apparently describing this ultrasound approach has been uploaded to arXiv [0]. If so, the resolution demonstrated is nowhere near sufficient to detect small changes to anatomy, let alone monitor them over time. Future developments could obviously improve on that. [0] “Whole Cross-Sectional Human Ultrasound Tomography” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00110

I have a similar feeling. One the one hand its great that they are spending the time and money to do this, on the other hand I am _very_ suspicious of their motives. Getting _a_ picture is not that difficult, getting an accurate, repeatable, high resolution picture is a lot harder, and state of the art. my worry is two fold: 1) over promise and causing injury to desperate people who see smudges on scans and have inva…

In the video David says he's building it just because he wants to. It really sounds like his own passion project. No investors. It's a nice position to be in.

Now I don't know this guy in the slightest. One view could be he's just a geek like us living out his dream building cool potentially useful stuff not entirely sure where it will lead.

A cynical view is it's all about $$$$.

Either way it's great HN content!

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#22

Post by Fraterkes »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #17
Fraterkes wrote: post #11

One thing that’s kinda awkward in the video: they mention one of the big shortcomings of ultrasound being that it can’t image “airy” organs like the lungs, and their expert responds to that by mentioning that the amount of angles/devices means that you still get imaging of everything surrounding the lungs. But the critiscism isn’t that the lungs would obstruct you from imaging certain areas, it’s that there’s just ve…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing ? So totally solveable I dont understand though, why you have to simultanously do this from all sides- have the ultrasound swim around with the patient? Takes out the comlexity? Or use boundary layers to keep the sound on the slice? Turn this cocktail glass full of patient into a tequila sunrise?

I don’t know if you’re joking, but liquid breathing has only really been tested on rats, like famously the one from The Abyss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abyss, which died a couple of days later.

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#23

Post by roer »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #17
Fraterkes wrote: post #11

One thing that’s kinda awkward in the video: they mention one of the big shortcomings of ultrasound being that it can’t image “airy” organs like the lungs, and their expert responds to that by mentioning that the amount of angles/devices means that you still get imaging of everything surrounding the lungs. But the critiscism isn’t that the lungs would obstruct you from imaging certain areas, it’s that there’s just ve…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing ? So totally solveable I dont understand though, why you have to simultanously do this from all sides- have the ultrasound swim around with the patient? Takes out the comlexity? Or use boundary layers to keep the sound on the slice? Turn this cocktail glass full of patient into a tequila sunrise?

As I understood it, they're using the rest of the array to receive when one is transmitting, thus getting signal from the opposite side of the body as well. I don't see how you can do this with just one device.

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#24

Post by roer »

This skepticism is weird to me. I might be overly naive, but it looks like these are people that have funding for doing something they think is cool and think could help people out. Whether or not it turns out that way is something we'll have to see, but the premise of just going ahead and building the thing should be applauded in my opinion

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#26

Post by KaiserPro »

jkahrs595 wrote: post #16
KaiserPro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's non-ionising True, but ultrasound isn't entirely benign. Depending on what frequency and what power it can crack solid parts of the body (its used to break up kidney/gall stones) it also can heat things up (which is, assuming my understanding is correct, why doppler scans for blood flow are not done on <18 week pregancy)

lasers can cut steel, so barcode scanners aren’t entirely benign

Yes, no Reductio ad absurdum.

My point is, phased arrays of ultrasound have the ability to be destructive. In the same way that a single MIMO wifi AP isn't going to cook you, but 10,000 MIMO arrays steering coherently over you will.

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#27

Post by sparklingmango »

bparsons wrote: post #2

Does this whole thing seem fishy to anyone else?

Yes. We are right to be suspicious due to the main goal of start ups and corporations: profit for their shareholders. Theranos will always be in the back of my mind regarding healthcare technology start ups.

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#29

Post by KaiserPro »

concrete_head wrote: post #21
KaiserPro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar feeling. One the one hand its great that they are spending the time and money to do this, on the other hand I am _very_ suspicious of their motives. Getting _a_ picture is not that difficult, getting an accurate, repeatable, high resolution picture is a lot harder, and state of the art. my worry is two fold: 1) over promise and causing injury to desperate people who see smudges on scans and have inva…

In the video David says he's building it just because he wants to. It really sounds like his own passion project. No investors. It's a nice position to be in. Now I don't know this guy in the slightest. One view could be he's just a geek like us living out his dream building cool potentially useful stuff not entirely sure where it will lead. A cynical view is it's all about $$$$. Either way it's great HN content!

I should have made clear, my suspicions are not really around the engineers running this, its the people who are less motivated by the original cause that can see $$$ in it.

Thats the point right, most of us would, if given the chance, divert some funding to work on a passion project that could easily save lives. That I applaud and would love more people to be able to do.

Re: Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]

#30

Post by tylergetsay »

KaiserPro wrote: post #14
IshKebab wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to image inside the lungs is probably only a minor limitation really. There's also inside the head, and inside the rib cage is going to be awkward too due to bones. Also ultrasound just isn't that good of an imaging technology, even with full aperture. That said, it's non-ionising and if they can make this reasonably cheap ( big if), then it's better than nothing at all. Probably decent for finding can…

> it's non-ionising True, but ultrasound isn't entirely benign. Depending on what frequency and what power it can crack solid parts of the body (its used to break up kidney/gall stones) it also can heat things up (which is, assuming my understanding is correct, why doppler scans for blood flow are not done on <18 week pregancy)

The probes they're using are off the shelf probes used everywhere including on small animals, I don't see how you could compare that to a lithotripsy
Post reply on HN