Israeli invention may revolutionize diagnosis of respiratory disease

Although he heads a promising hi-tech company, with a production line in China and branches in Frankfurt and Seattle, Dr. Yigal Kushnir continues to see patients at the clinic in his Pardes Hannah home.

During the winter, when many patients complain of a cough or a cold, doctors must generally decide whether to make do with a stethoscope or send them for an X-ray and expose them to radiation.

Kushnir, however, does not have to face such a dilemma. His clinic has a machine that takes less than a minute to produce a comprehensive and precise image of the lungs, without radiation. So far, the machine can be found in very few health clinics around the world - since Kushnir himself invented it and the company he heads, Deep Breeze, began marketing the product only three months ago. But within a few years, Kushnir hopes that his machine will be found in every emergency room and that most doctors will have access to it, causing a diagnostic revolution.

The imaging technology invented by Kushnir - called Vibration Response Imaging, or VRI - is based on a concept similar to the one that the humble stethoscope uses. In contrast to an X-ray or ultrasound, VRI does not require radiation or ultrasound waves, but creates an image based on the natural vibrations created in the lungs as a result of the passage of air.

To get an image, 40 delicate sensors are attached to the patient's back with a vacuum. The patient is asked to breathe and the sensors transfer the vibrations they record to a computer, which identifies the frequency with which the lungs are vibrating by isolating it from the other sounds the body makes. The image of the lungs appears on the computer screen, allowing doctors to identify health problems that until now required expensive, and occasionally dangerous, tests. In addition, the machine provides precise information about the level at which the lungs are functioning.

Kushnir, a 61-year-old pediatrician, said that what pushed him to invent the machine was the desire to prevent superfluous X-rays.

"The idea came to me while I was jogging six years ago," he said. "Suddenly I thought that it's possible to invent an alternative to a chest X-ray. I'm a pediatrician, and all my life I've been thinking how horrible it is to send children unnecessarily for chest X-rays. I thought to myself that when I use a stethoscope, I listen to the sounds and create for myself in my head a kind of image of the lung. But this measure is not precise, and depends on the doctor's memory. I asked myself, 'why not invent a digital machine that will work on the same principle?'"

In the next few months, Deep Breeze is due to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and begin marketing in the United States. He has already begun marketing VRI in Europe, and it is undergoing trial use in some hospitals in Israel, Germany and the U.S.

Another VRI machine is in the works: one that will produce an image of the heart, which is due to come on the market at the end of 2007.

Until recently, no on thought that such imaging would work, said Kushnir.

"No one believed that it could be done - taking these sounds, cleaning them and creating a picture," he said. "They once thought that to do this, they would need 50 super-computers, and we do it with a regular PC."

As of now, the VRI lung imaging machine costs about $50,000, but Kushnir plans to manufacture a far cheaper version in the future.

"In our vision," he said, "there won't be a doctor who doesn't have this technology."