医学超声在空间站的应用及展望

Medical Ultrasound in Space Stations:Achievements and Future Applications

超声仪器作为常规的医学影像设备,在临床上已经广泛应用多年,深受广大医务工作者的推崇。自人类载人航天活动以来,超声仪器因具有体积小、质量轻、功耗低、无辐射等优点,成为空间站唯一的医学影像设备,在保障航天员健康和人体生物医学研究方面发挥了不可或缺的作用,并体现了重要的应用价值。本文首先回顾了在空间站上应用超声所取得的研究成果,然后介绍了目前国际空间站超声应用状况,并根据航天飞行中人体常见的变化,结合当今肌肉骨骼超声新技术发展趋势,展望未来超声在航天飞行中的应用前景。

Ultrasound imaging has been widely used for medical applications for several decades,and contributed to diagnosis and monitoring of many different diseases.In comparison with other imaging modalities,ultrasound has features of radiation-free,compactness,low power consumption.Since the beginning of manned spaceflight,ultrasound scanner has been selected as the medical imaging device to be brought to the space,which is still the only imaging device available today in space stations.Medical ultrasound has made significant contributions to the healthcare of astronauts and related biomedical researches.In this paper,we first reviewed the achievements made by medical ultrasound in space stations in various programs,then the applications of ultrasound conducted in the International Space Stations（ISS） were summarized.Finally we discussed the potential applications of medical ultrasound for musculoskeletal tissues,which become increasingly important as the astronauts have more activities in space stations and missions with longer durations.