World's first 5D ultrasound system developed

Mumbai: From working in the National Stock Exchange of India Tech till about 2008, to developing what could be the world’s first five-dimensional ultrasound system about ten years later, Dr Nishikant Deshmukh has come a long way.

The Amravati-born 33-year-old has just earned his doctoral degree and the medical breakthrough came as part of his thesis that he defended in October last year.

“This 5D ultrasound system is a massively parallel architecture, involving the integration of several different components to make it a reality, where every millisecond is important,” Deshmukh informs us from Baltimore, where he currently is a part of the prestigious John Hopkins University. “The work was intense, needed patience to get accurate results, involved several hours of lab work in the unit. I was the first to use graphics processing unit (GPU) for generating elastography, and not much support was available in early days. This project is one of the several projects I had undertaken as part of my Ph.D. thesis.”

The ultrasound system Mr Deshmukh has been working on is noteworthy since the current one allows doctors to access mostly two—dimensional ultrasound technology. While some hospitals do choose to use a more advanced, 3D graphics, it’s not real-time, thereby posing trouble for surgeons in cases of surgeries requiring quick decision-making. The aim, informs Mr Deshmukh, is to provide the new ultrasound system at the place of diagnosis and during cancer treatment.