how doctors employ lightweight to diagnose diseases

This is another article in our “Delicate and Health” series, in which we look at how lightweight affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways. Read other articles in this series.

You don’t feel well. You’ve had a throbbing headache, dizziness, and vomiting all week after your last few meals.

You visit your GP to get answers and sit as he shines a lightweight in your eyes, orders a blood test and asks for imaging tests.

Everything your GP has done is based on lightweight. These are just some of the optical technologies that are having a huge impact on the way we diagnose diseases.

1. On-site testing

Point-of-care diagnostics allow doctors to test patients on-site and get answers in minutes, rather than sending samples to a lab for analysis.

A “flashlight” used by a family doctor to look inside the eye (so-called ophthalmoscope) is a great example. This allows doctors to detect abnormal blood flow in the eye, deformation of the cornea (the outermost crystal clear layer of the eye), or swelling of the optic discs (the circular section at the back of the eye where the nerve connection to the brain begins). Swollen discs are a sign of increased pressure inside the head (or, in the worst case scenario, a brain tumor) that may be caused by causing your headaches.

Invention lasers and LEDs has made many other miniaturized technologies available at the bedside or in the clinic, rather than in the laboratory.

A celebrated example is pulse oximetry, in which a clip attached to the finger provides information about the level of blood oxygenation. He does this through measuring different reactions of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood to different colors of lightweight.

Pulse oximetry is used in hospitals (and sometimes at home) to monitor the health of the respiratory system and heart. In hospitals, it is also a valuable detection tool heart defects in infants.

2. Looking at molecules

Now let’s go back to this blood test. Analyzing a tiny amount of blood allows you to diagnose many different diseases.

A device called an automatic “complete blood count analyzer” that checks overall health indicators. This device directs focused beams of lightweight through blood samples stored in tiny glass tubes. It counts the number of blood cells, determines their specific type and provides the level of hemoglobin (a protein in red blood cells that distributes oxygen in the body). Within minutes this machine can deliver snapshot general health.

To obtain more specific disease markers, blood serum is separated from heavier cells by centrifugation in a rotating instrument called a centrifuge. The serum is then subjected to special chemical stains and enzyme tests that change color depending on the presence of certain molecules, which may be a sign of disease.

These color changes cannot be detected with the naked eye. However, a beam of lightweight from an instrument called a spectrometer can detect tiny amounts of these substances in the blood and determine whether and at what concentrations biomarkers of diseases are present.

3. Medical imaging

Let’s look again at the medical images ordered by your GP. The development of fiber optic technology, which became celebrated for transforming high-speed digital communications (such as NBN), allows lightweight to enter the body. Result? High resolution optical imaging.

A typical example is endoscopeduring which fibers with a tiny camera on the end are inserted into natural body openings (such as the mouth or anus) to examine the intestines or respiratory tract.

Surgeons can employ the same technology through small incisions to view the inside of the body on a video screen during surgery laparoscopic surgery (also known as keyhole surgery) to diagnose and treat diseases.

What about the future?

Advances in nanotechnology and a better understanding of how lightweight interacts with our tissues are leading to up-to-date light-based tools that assist diagnose disease. These include:

• nanomaterials (materials on an extremely tiny scale, many thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair). They are used in next-generation sensors and up-to-date diagnostic tests

• wearable optical biosensors nail size can be taken into account in devices such as watches, contact lenses and finger bands. These devices enable non-invasive measurement of sweat, tears and saliva in real time

• AI tools to analyze how blood serum scatters infrared lightweight. This enabled scientists to build extensive database scatter patterns to detect any cancer

• a type of non-invasive imaging, the so-called optical coherence tomography for more detailed imaging of the eye, heart and skin

• fiber optic technology that allows a tiny microscope to be introduced into the body the tip of the needle.

So the next time you see your primary care doctor who performs (or orders) certain tests, chances are that at least one of those tests will depend on lightweight to diagnose the condition.