Gizmos & Gadgets: Meet the Smartphone Ultrasound App for Diagnostic Imaging

October 29, 2017 – A Connecticut-based company, Butterfly Network, founded in 2011, is about to deliver an ultrasound wand that creates high-quality images and shows them on a range of Apple iPhone models. Called the Butterfly iQ, it can be purchased for $1,999 by any licensed healthcare practitioner in the U.S. who does diagnostic ultrasound as part of his or her practice. Delivery will begin in early 2018.

This is not yet a general consumer device even though it works with iPhones from the models SE, 6S and up to the new iPhone X. It’s the real deal communicating with PACS and DICOM worklist servers, the picture archiving and communication systems used by diagnostic imaging departments in hospitals today. The images Butterfly iQ creates are stored in the cloud securely and are totally HIPAA compliant.

What’s revolutionary about the Butterfly iQ isn’t just the fact that it works with iPhones.

The wand that creates the pictures and is connected to an iPhone by USB cable uses 9,000 capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs) integrated into a semiconductor chip the size of postage stamp. The CMUT is a tiny ultrasonic emitter and each is capable of creating detailed images, but together, they produce ultrasounds that are pretty close in terms of detail to those produced by much more expensive machines found in hospitals and testing labs. And unlike those far more expensive machines which require multiple wands to produce a range of images for different applications, the Butterfly iQ is a single device capable of creating images that meet FDA standards across a range of clinical applications including ultrasound for:

• abdominal
• cardiac adult
• cardiac pediatric
• fetal/obstetric
• gynecological
• musculoskeletal (conventional)
• musculoskeletal (superficial)
• pediatric
• peripheral vessel
• procedural guidance
• small organ
• urology

Think of what a difference maker this device can be for an emergency room physician who can pull it out of his or her pocket, plug it into an iPhone and immediately see an image that can lead to a faster diagnosis and intervention. And at the price, every paramedic could have one on board an ambulance to instantly understand the extent of the injury or condition of a patient in their care.

The Butterfly Network will start shipping the Butterfly iQ to what is a growing backlog of orders by early in 2018. Meanwhile, the company continues to work on adding artificial intelligence software to the product so that it can be used by people with no previous experience with ultrasound. The app would then help with positioning the device, collecting the images, and interpreting them. Will all of us soon be able to do our own diagnostic imaging and see the results on a smartphone? Perhaps very soon.