Microbubble-mediated erosion and monitoring for the therapeutic treatment of urinary stones

We report on engineered microbubbles designed to accumulate on surfaces of urinary stone and facilitate stone comminution through mechanical effects including inertial collapse and pressure focusing against the urinary stone surface. In one current application of these engineered microbubbles, small quantities of engineered microbubbles, suspended in an aqueous solution, are placed in the patient’s upper urinary tract via a cystoscopically positioned catheter and energized by quasi-collimated beams of acoustic energy emanating from a treatment head positioned on the patient’s lower back, with the peak pressures of the beam in the range of diagnostic ultrasound. Non-invasive acoustic monitoring of microbubble dynamics and correlating signatures of inertial collapse with treatment parameters presents a promising strategy for gaining further insights on the mechanism of action as well as intra-treatment monitoring for improving clinical outcomes. To explore this detection strategy, we seek to compare the change in mass loss of model stones and the inertial collapse of the microbubbles measured via acoustic spectroscopy as a function of time and pressure.