To effectively treat stroke and prevent stroke, you need to know just what is literally happening in a patient's head. CT Scans and MRI scans are tools most of us are familiar with. Generally if you suspect a stroke is possible, you need these two scans done. There's another tool out there, too, that's cheaper, more portable, and involves no radiation. It's called Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound. It's a great complement to the other scans, and it can provide impressive insight to supplement the information from the radiologists. A skilled practitioner is a great complement to the care team. I first talked about this technology in my conversation with Dr. Aaron Stayman a few years back (Is my Brain Pregnant? Ultrasound and Stroke: Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound). It's fascinating stuff. The problem is that it does require a skilled technician or someone specifically trained in the technique. Despite the work of advocates like Dr. Stayman and Dr. Mark Rubin, there just aren't enough of those techs. Dr. Robert Hamilton of NovaSignal has a solution. His robotic machine automates the whole process, makes it faster, more reliable, and cheaper while giving more accurate results in a lot of scenarios. The NovaSignal solution has the potential to make this technology available to patients and medical practitioners around the world. Drs. Rubin and Hamilton join me in this episode to discuss the technology, the research, and the device itself. If you don't see the audio player below, visit http://Strokecast.com/TCD to listen to the conversation. Click here for a machine-generated transcript Who are Drs. Rubin and Hamilton? Dr. Mark N. Rubin is a vascular neurologist and associate professor of neurology with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center Department of Neurology. He specializes in vascular neurology and is experienced in stroke and cerebrovascular disease, and an experienced sonographer and expert interpreter of carotid duplex ultrasound and transcranial Doppler ultrasonography. He received his medical degree from University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his Adult Neurology residency and fellowships (Neurohospitalist and Vascular Neurology) at the Mayo Clinic. Robert Hamilton, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of NovaSignal. He is an accomplished entrepreneur, engineer, and clinical researcher with a passion for innovative technologies that allow for increased access to care. Robert, a biomedical engineer by training, is an expert in image/signal processing and machine learning, with extensive experience in cerebral blood flow, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and other neurological disorders. Robert co-founded NovaSignal based on technology he developed during his Ph.D. During his tenure at the company, Robert has supported the entire lifecycle of the NovaSignal autonomous ultrasound platform from idea to commercialization with regulatory clearances in the US, Europe, and Canada. Additionally, Robert has designed and completed several clinical trials supporting the use of the technology in different neurological conditions and has acted as principal investigator on federal grants and contracts totaling more than $25M from the Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.  Finally, Robert has achieved greater than 100 citations of his work in peer-reviewed publications and conferences and holds over 50 patent assets related to the core technology developed during his PhD studies. TCD vs Traditional Ultrasound When most of us think of ultrasound in medicine, we think of the sonograms of developing children, where parents and doctors swear they can see a human being in those black and white lines. Personally, they seem more like those Magic Eye pictures from the 90s. Traditional ultrasound can also capture picture