ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,564,372, issued on March 3.
"Tactile ultrasound method and probe for predicting preterm birth" was invented by Vladimir Egorov (Princeton, N.J.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A cervical probe, outfitted with a tactile sensor array and an ultrasound transducer, is designed for simultaneous collection of stress and ultrasound strain data from the same cervical sector. The gathered stress and strain data from multiple cervical sectors are sent to a data processor, which calculates cervical elasticity as a strain-to-stress ratio. Subsequently, an average stress-to-strain ratio is compared to a predetermined cutoff value to predict preterm bi...