Biological effects of tandem shock waves demonstrated on magnetic resonance

The shock wave is used for the treatment of kidney stones, eventually of gall stones, for more than 20 years. It is a pressure wave, which breaks through soft tissues easily and it is possible to focus it into a small volume. The excellent results of the treatment of concrements led to considerations about another usage of the shock wave. The research is now concentrated on the possibility of the damage to tumour tissues.

In contrast to concrements tumour tissues are not different from healthy tissues as for their acoustic attributes. That is why a new source of shock waves was used in this work. The source allows generating two successive shock waves focused into a common focus, so-called tandem shock waves. The biological effects of the tandem shock waves generated by the new source on rats hepatic tissue and rabbit femoral muscle in vivo were studied in this work. The damage is demonstrated by magnetic resonance imaging.

MR images showed tissue damage in focus. There was damage of the liver tissue, muscle and also stomach wall.

We found that the tandem shock waves are able to damage the acoustically homogeneous soft tissue in the focus, i.e. in the depth. In tissues in front of the focus, there is, however, no damage (Fig. 10, Ref. 15).