In a pathbreaking development, MIT scientists have developed an ultrasound technique that scans through the patient’s body without touching. The innovation is expected to help remotely image and assess health of infants, burn victims, and accident survivors in hard-to-reach places.

Conventional ultrasound requires body contact, and prove to be limiting when clinicians want to image patients who tolerate the procedure well. The new laser ultrasound technique leverages an eye and skin safe laser system to remotely image the inside of a person.

When trained on a patient’s skin, one laser remotely generates sound waves that bounce through the body. The second laser detects the reflected waves, which are then translated into an image similar to conventional ultrasound.

The team of scientists working on the laser ultrasound technique, selected 1,550-nanometer lasers, a wavelength which is highly absorbed by water, and is skin and eye safe.