Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.
The idea is to create a seat that scans your prostate or cervix on a daily basis and alerts you if there are any changes that need to be looked at. Noninvasively detect the formation of cancer while there is still time for successful treatment.
The seat would have an embedded ultrasound and a computer. You sit on it and remain still until you hear a beep. That's your indication to slowly move so that the scanner can get a good view from different angles. There are 3 types of beeps - one tells you to move, 2nd tells you to stay still. You hopefully never hear the 3rd, which tells you that something is wrong and you need to get checked out.
The scanner is controlled by AI that identifies patterns. You configure it so that it knows what it's looking at. Thereafter it directs you in the same positions so that it compares your prostate/cervix over time from the same angles. It saves all historic images and outputs the results via an app, email, etc. You see a percentual change over time. You hear an alert when the change goes over a threshold.
The seat could be configured for multiple people so that different household members can scan themselves daily.
Nowadays people spend more and more time sitting, which often causes the heating of the pelvis and all the organs located in the pelvic area. Except for the ultrasound screening, the chair could have a simple add-on that would help prevent another disorder - varicocele.
Varicocele is an enlargement of the veins within the loose bag of skin that holds the testicles and can negatively affect sperm production and quality . Although it is not clear if a varicocele can be potentiated by testicle over-heating, the pathophysiology of varicocele in male infertility can be explained by an increase in testicular temperature due to impaired heat transfer . Therefore, reducing the heating while sitting could lower the negative impact of varicocele on fertility and potentially decrease the probability of varicocele development.
THE IDEA:
For this reason, the idea of a pad that is small and easily portable, and helps maintain constant temperature was born. It would be made of an insulating material that ensures that the outside temperature does not affect its heating/cooling. In this way, the pad would maintain its constant temperature, allowing a stable temperature for sperm production of 34˚C. The pad would be intended primarily for men who sit for a long time every day.
WHAT IS THE KEY:
The pad would be produced from an aerogel blanket. The solid component in silica aerogel consists of tiny, three-dimensional, intertwined clusters. They comprise only 3% of the volume and are very poor conductors. Air in microscopic pores make up the remaining 97% of aerogel’s volume. This air has very little room to move, inhibiting both convection and gas-phase conduction. These characteristics make aerogel the world’s lowest density solid and most effective thermal insulator. [ https://www.aerogel.com/about-aerogel/] That is important because one of the most important causes for heating around pelvis while sitting is the lack of air flow through the chair or pad on which the person is sitting.
Aerogel materials are flexible super insulation blankets designed for high & low temperature applications. The unique properties of very low thermal conductivity, high temperature resistance, good flexibility and ease-of-use would greatly help achieving the health goal while enabling material quality and easy implementation in sitting furniture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvppTY_Vdm4].
I really love the idea of daily screening for malignant formations and this could be a revolutionary product since we all tend to sit a lot. The only problem could be in the technique itself. Ultrasound requires no obstacles between the device and the skin. Therefore, to obtain decent images, you should sit on the chair and preferably rub the gel on scanned areas :D
Darko Savic Aug 08, 2021