How we can use light to see deep inside our bodies and brains | Mary Lou Jepsen
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN mentions it as a reference for Openwater's approach of light-based deep tissue imaging.
What it is
Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrates using red light and sound to see inside the body and brain, aiming at tumor detection and neural activity measurement, and potentially a cheaper wearable MRI replacement.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends morphle · 2024-12 · on “Noninvasive imaging method can penetrate deeper into living tissue”
Mary Lou Jepsen of openwater.cc [2] has managed to image neurons and other large cell structures deep inside living bodies by phase wave interferometry and descattering signals through human tissues, even through skull and bone[1] using CMOS imageing chips, lasers, ultrasonics and holographics. A thousand times cheaper fMRI. She aims to get to realtime million pixels moving picture resolutions of around a micron. Eventually she will be able to read and write neurons or vibrate and someday maybe burn cell tissues to destruction. There are later presentations at the website where the technique is better described and visualized, but [1] is a good quick place to start and judge if you want to s
Cites pontifier · 2018-12 · on “Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire? (2016)”
There is a very interesting image in the article. It shows a bunch of light coming into a block and emerging as a beam. It also has a caption saying this is impossible. It struck me as very similar to the setup in this video. [this video] At about 4 minutes in, a nearly identical setup is shown with a beam of light emerging from a block of opaque material using holographic techniques. It seems plausible to me that a specially designed anti-moon hologram could allow reconstruction of the incident light from the sun, thus allowing a fire to be started without violating any law of thermodynamics.
Cites throwaway316943 · 2020-09 · on “Trials begin for a new weapon against Parkinson’s: light”
Interesting to note that NIR light can penetrate deep into the body. There is research into using this as a medical imaging technique [0] and also research on improving age related vision loss [1] [0] [this video] [1] [LINK]
Cites systemsignal · 2021-09 · on “DARPA grant to work on sensing and stimulating the brain noninvasively [video]”
Thoughts on openwater? [LINK] Claim to use light for imaging [this video] There’s also the company Kernel Both companies have pretty successful founders