[backwardsmoo]

I had the absolute pleasure during my engineering undergraduate (Oxford) to take a biomedical module. One of my 'labs' was on nonlinear acoustics, specifically ultrasound applied for therapeutic uses. It was very captivating seeing a very focused point within a block of gel become ablated. A part I found particularly exciting was realising that it was a phased array of ultrasonic emitters, so that the point where the ablation occurred could in fact be placed anywhere you desired in the gel.

They showed us results of HIFU applied to real patients to non-invasively ablate tumours and treat prostate issues. As far as I can tell the probe creating the ultrasonic waves needs to be relatively close.

A thought I had at the time was if you knew all of the material properties of all of the tissues inside someone and their locations (say with an MRI) you could in theory apply this even deeper in someone than is currently possible - with a larger stick-on patch of actuators as a phased array.

Finally, another memorable thing that was discussed was what another researcher was doing with ultrasonics. Stride (who I am delighted to say was a fantastic lecturer) was very interested in bubbles. She would construct tiny bubbles where the surface (or interior?) was made of a chemotherapy drug. These bubbles could then be injected into someone's blood stream and would be ruptured using ultrasound to allow for extremely targeted application of chemotherapy (the jet formed from rupture would be so strong it would inject the drug into nearby tissue).

Fascinating, fascinating stuff but of course developed over many years of hard work.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Stride…was very interested in bubbles

This reminds me of Feynman s spinning plates.

It also drives home the serendipity of science. One can easily pander a researcher spending their days thinking about bubbles from a place of ignorance. Yet this is what basic research often looks like—play.

[sndean]

As someone who has worked on bubbles from a bioengineering/synthetic biology perspective, it is definitely play at some level. Like “what happens if we freeze dry them?” And of course determining which extremely specific kind works best for whatever application, etc.

[bikeshaving]

Okay, you sold me. Where can I get an ultrasonic massage?

[walrusted]

a high percentage of physical therapists have an ultrasound massage device.

[aantix]

> treat prostate issues

Is prostate size reduction possible?

[backwardsmoo]

The example that I saw was of a patient whose prostate had swollen closing up the urethra. HIFU was applied to ablate the urethra which “opened it back up” so that fluids could pass through again un-impeded. As a consequence the patient could then live a normal life.

[BurningFrog]

"Ablation (Latin: ablatio – removal) is the removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosive processes, or by other means."