For the Lungs: A Few Extra Sets of Ears

For doctors, the way to a patient's lungs has always been through the ears -- the doctor's ears, that is, aided, of course, by a stethoscope. With the right training and experience, a physician can hear whether the lungs are filling with fluid, clogged by pneumonia or constricted by asthma.

But hearing is often open to interpretation. A new device, above, goes the stethoscope one better, letting the doctor see what he hears -- without the need to use radiation or an invasive procedure or ask the patient to hold rock-still.

Available in the United States since last year, the machine uses 42 ultra-high-frequency microphones laid over the patient's back. As the patient breathes, the microphones detect lung vibrations and feed them to a computer that quickly produces images showing conditions in the lungs.

Muhammad Shibli, a lung expert and co-director of the Sleep Disorders Institute at Providence Hospital in Northeast Washington, calls the device promising, provided further clinical trials demonstrate its effectiveness.

The developer, Deep Breeze of Israel, keeps an office in Redmond, Wash., and has marketed the device in Europe and Asia for several years. Each unit costs $35,000, but the company is working to create a version that will go for about $10,000.

-- Ranit Mishori