Biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg of Butterfly Network, a company creating a medical imaging device that could change the way we see the inside of the human body, has just raised $100 million dollars in funding for his three year-old startup. The development of this handheld ultrasound scanner would save a trip to that massive MRI machine. Ever had an MRI? It costs a fortune and takes a very long time. Rothberg believes medical imaging doesn't have to be so enormous, expensive, and require so much expertise. Rather, MRIs and ultrasounds could be performed more efficiently, and less expensive by automating the process. The startup hopes to use this funding for readying the device in about 18 months.

Founded by both Rothberg and a bunch of MIT physicist and engineers, Butterfly Network will be utilizing a new kind of ultrasound chip to make the scanner. According to Technology Review, most ultrasound machines achieve sound waves using “small piezoelectric crystals or ceramics” that require very specific manipulations for processing. However, “integrating ultrasound elements directly on a computer chip” opens up the possibility of producing them in large batches, making it easier to “create the type of arrays needed to produce 3D images”.

Rothberg claims it would be nearly “as cheap as a stethoscope” and will “make doctors 100 times as effective”. To use the device, users will be provided with a walk through tutorial (similar to Apple's Panorama snapshot tool). Ultrasound scanners will scan the human body then create 3D images in real-time, send them to the cloud, then automatically begin diagnosing the images (Wired). It's like looking through a window, as far as seeing things clearly and quickly. But, in a human case, a doctor could look inside of a woman's womb to see abnormal tissue inside of the baby.

Such an imaging device could allow doctors to see the human body in “completely new ways”, but the startup wants to go beyond that with other products, such as non-invasive surgical technology, and utilizing heat to destroy cancer cells. Rothberg hasn't released details on the appearance of the scanner, nor has he provided any further specifics on its mechanics. We can expect the “details to come out when we are on stage selling it”, he says, which is expected to be in the next year and a half.