Ultrasound imaging with smartphones using a USB-based probe

This is the application developed by Washington University scientists led by Associate Professor William Richard and researcher David Zar which uses commercial USB ultrasound probes with Microsoft Windows smartphones. (The images are from their poster session presented at the 2009 meeting of the World Health Congress.)

Along with the traditional uses of clinical ultrasound imaging, its convenience can be utilized for imaging veins arteries for starting IVs and central lines (I wish I had this while a surgical resident), as well as for gathering data in remote regions of the developing world for analysis on the spot, or sneding that data back to a centralized service if needed.

Here's their Wiki.

Here's the press release