Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone.

Ultrasound imaging is the most widely used medical imaging modality in the world when considering the number of images created annually. The forecasted growth for the ultrasound market from US$4.6 billion in 2012 to almost US$7 billion by 2019 has boosted research in medical ultrasound fields, especially with regards to transducer design.

Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of the inside of the body and send them to a computer to create sonograms. Researchers replaced the piezoelectric crystals with tiny vibrating drums made of polymer resin, called polyCMUTs (polymer capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers), which are cheaper to manufacture.