Micro-X has Flinders University biomed students involved on its light mobile stroke scanner X-ray project
A concept for Micro-X's lightweight mobile stroke scanner, suited to be used in an ambulance and medical response plane.
Image courtesy Micro-X
South Australian X-ray machines maker Micro-X in 2020 tapped into Flinders University’s pool of biomedical engineering undergraduates as it developed Australia’s first mobile brain stroke detection units for ambulances and medical aircraft.
A CT scan was the only accurate way of crucially pinpointing whether a person suffering stroke had bleeding or blockage in the brain. But Australia lacked mobile CT stroke scanners that could be installed in ambulances and planes to allow quicker response time. Micro-X with the Australian Stroke Alliance, led by Royal Melbourne Hospital clinicals specialists, was developing a lightweight ring scanner using carbon nano tubes.
The smaller, lighter and cheaper concept, with high-speed imaging capabilities had attracted attention from the John Hopkins University in the United States and imaging giant Fuji. A foam model was created to showcase the potential design of an operational prototype, to be made at the company’s manufacturing plant in Tonsley Innovation District, in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, where it also made the world’s only carbon nanotube X-ray systems.
Flinders University biomedical engineering graduates Mia Maric and Erica Nunn completed a 20-week casual placement with Micro-X to develop an algorithm improving the images produced from the ring scanner to allow accurate detection of brain bleeds.
Micro-X, an Australian sharemarket-listed company, had already commercialised two mobile X-ray devices, made at Tonsley, for sale overseas: the Carestream Nano for hospital settings and Rover, a more rugged product for emergency medical use by defence forces.
Micro-X applied to the federal government’s medical research future fund for to develop an operational prototype of its mobile stroke scanner. Micro-X also would have to invest substantially in space, machinery and equipment to make the devices at Tonsley.
