3611 results about "Shock wave" patented technology

A system for breaking obstructions in body lumens includes a catheter including an elongated carrier, a balloon about the carrier in sealed relation thereto, the balloon being arranged to receive a fluid therein that inflates the balloon, and an arc generator including at least one electrode within the balloon that forms a mechanical shock wave within the balloon. The system further includes a power source that provides electrical energy to the arc generator.

Apparatus for stimulating photoacoustic waves in a region of a body and generating signals responsive to the stimulated waves comprising: a light source (27) that provides light that stimulates photoacoustic waves (54) in the region; a light pipe (26) having an output aperture (80) and at least one input aperture, which light pipe receives the light from the light source at the at least one input aperture and transmits the received light to illuminate the region from the output aperture; and at least one acoustic transducer (22) that generates signals responsive to acoustic energy from the photoacoustic waves that is incident on the optical output aperture.

A method and system for treating a patient to repair damaged tissue which includes exposing a selected area of bone marrow of a patient to ultrasound waves or ultra shock waves so that cells comprising stem cells, progenitor cells or macrophages are generated in the area of the bone marrow of the patient due to the ultrasound, converting the cells from the bone marrow of the patient and reducing the damaged tissue in the bone marrow of the patient by repairing the damaged tissue.

Provided is a swing speed analyzer for mounting on a swinging implement and comprising a first accelerometer, a processor and a shock attenuator. The processor uses an output from the first accelerometer to compute a swing speed of the swinging implement. The shock attenuator is comprised of a material that is sized and dimensioned to dampen an impact shock wave by more than 50% at 125 Hz. The material is preferably sized and dimensioned to dampen the impact shock wave from more than 1000 g to less than 500 g. Suitable attenuators can include viscoelastomeric materials such as foam. The swing speed analyzer can advantageously include any of a releasable attachment mechanism, a liquid crystal or other visual display, a second accelerometer, and a strain gauge. The analyzer can advantageously be attached to a golf club, a tennis racket, a baseball bat, or a hockey stick.

An angioplasty catheter includes an elongated carrier, and an angioplasty balloon about the carrier in sealed relation thereto. The balloon is arranged to receive a fluid therein that inflates the balloon. The catheter further includes a shock wave generator within the balloon that forms a rapidly expanding and collapsing bubble within the balloon to form mechanical shock waves within the balloon. The expanding bubble forms a first shock and the collapsing balloon forms a second shock wave. The shock wave generator is arranged such that the energy of the first shock wave is greater than the energy of the second shock wave.

A valvuloplasty system comprises a balloon adapted to be placed adjacent leaflets of a valve. The balloon is inflatable with a liquid. The system further includes a shock wave generator within the balloon that produces shock waves. The shock waves propagate through the liquid and impinge upon the valve to decalcify and open the valve.

The system for treating an internal organ has a generator source for producing a shock wave connected to a handheld or small shock wave applicator device 2, wherein the external housing 16 of the device 2 is hermetically sealed in a non-electrically conductive insulating skin membrane 5 being of a polymer material, preferably a silicone rubber or polyurethane rubber. Preferably the entire device 2 including the connectors 32, 33 and at least a 20 cm portion of attached cable 1 is sealed using a dip coating process or alternatively can use an insert molding process wherein the device 2 is placed in a mold 400 and the skin membrane 5 is injection molded around the entire housing 16 and the cable 1 has an outer skin 5 that abuttingly seals at a connection 32, 33 to the housing 16. The device 2 may further include an internal vacuum conduit connected to a vacuum system to detect leakages and in use may be used with a sterile sleeve cover with a similar vacuum system for leakage detection.

Disclosed is a method for removing deposits from an in vivo tissue, such as removing calcified plaque from a calcified aortic valve by removing the deposits with the help of shock waves produced by a light-source such as a laser in an aqueous liquid in proximity of the tissue as well as a shock-wave generating device useful in implementing the method. Disclosed is a minimally invasive valve-sparing treatment of calcific aortic stenosis.

A catheter comprises an elongated carrier and a balloon carried by the carrier in sealed relation thereto. The balloon has an outer surface and is arranged to receive a fluid therein that inflates the balloon. The catheter further comprises a shock wave generator within the balloon that forms mechanical shock waves within the balloon, and a medicinal agent carried on the outer surface of the balloon. The medicinal agent is releasable from the balloon by the shock waves.

An apparatus includes a balloon adapted to be placed adjacent a calcified region of a body. The balloon is inflatable with a liquid. The apparatus further includes a shock wave generator within the balloon that produces shock waves that propagate through the liquid for impinging upon the calcified region adjacent the balloon. The shock wave generator includes a plurality of shock wave sources distributed within the balloon.

Described herein are low-profile electrodes for use with an angioplasty shockwave catheter. A low-profile electrode assembly may have an inner electrode, an insulating layer disposed over the inner electrode such that an opening in the insulating layer is aligned with the inner electrode, and an outer electrode sheath disposed over the insulating layer such that an opening in the outer electrode sheath is coaxially aligned with the opening in the insulating layer. This layered configuration allows for the generation of shockwaves that propagate outward from the side of the catheter. In some variations, the electrode assembly has a second inner electrode, and the insulating layer and outer electrode may each have a second opening that are coaxially aligned with the second inner electrode. An angioplasty shockwave catheter may have a plurality of such low-profile electrode assemblies along its length to break up calcified plaques along a length of a vessel.

A laser shock peening process for producing one or more compressive residual stress regions in a medical device is disclosed. A high-energy laser apparatus can be utilized to direct an intense laser beam through a confining medium and onto the target surface of a workpiece. An absorption overlay disposed on the target surface of the workpiece absorbs the laser beam, inducing a pressure shock wave that forms a compressive residual stress region deep within the workpiece. Medical devices such as stents, guidewires, catheters, and the like having one or more of these compressive residual stress regions are also disclosed.

This invention discloses an apparatus and method for producing microcavitational activity in aqueous fluids for non-invasive macromolecule delivery into living cells. A standard electrohydraulic shock wave lithotripter is fitted with an adjustable ring reflector that shares the same foci as the standard lithotripter hemi-ellipsoidal reflector. A small portion of the spherical shock wave, generated by the spark discharge at the first focus (F1), is reflected and diffracted by the ring reflector, resulting in a weak preceding shock wave approximately 8.5 mus in front of the lithotripter shock wave reflected and diffracted by the hemi-ellipsoidal reflector. The peak negative pressure of the preceding weak shock wave or pulse at F2 can be adjusted from -0.96 to -1.91 MPa, using an output voltage of 25 kV. Living cells are exposed to the preceding shock wave and the lithotripter shock wave. With optimal pulse combination, the maximum efficiency of shock wave-induced cell membrane permeabilization can be enhanced substantially (up to 91%), by applying to the living cells a low dosage of, for example, 50 shocks. In addition, injury to mouse lymphoid cells is significantly increased at high dosage (up to 50% with shock number >100). The invention thus enables shock wave-inertial microbubble interaction to be used selectively to either enhance the efficiency of shock wave-mediated macromolecule delivery at low dosage or tissue destruction at high dosage.

The present invention is a device for the destruction of adipose tissue comprising two or more ultrasound generators positioned on opposing sides of the treatment area each generating a non-focused wave that converge forming a interferential clash zone with the treatment area therein. Ultrasound generators are contained within a handpiece housing. Furthermore the present invention provides an optional housing having a source of vacuum for encompassing a treatment area whereby the treatment area is drawn bell-shaped into the housing whereupon a pair of shock wave generators are energized to produce cavitational areas within the treatment area and a third interferential energized area between the cavitational areas.

The invention is a hole wall strengthening method and device based on laser shock wave technique, relating to the laser machining field. And the invention firstly determines the corresponding reflecting cone diameter according to the principle of cooperation of hole size and hole shaft of a to-be-machined workpiece, coating energy absorbing layer material on the concial surface of the reflecting cone and then inserting the reflecting cone in the workpiece, installing the workpiece on a clamp, injecting constraint layer in the to-be-machined hole; a laser generates a laser pulse which irradiates the energy absorbing layer through light guiding system and constraint layer, and the energy absorbing layer absorbs the laser energy to vaporize, ionize, form plasma explosion, generate high amplitude shock wave, and strengthen the hole wall. And the invention can strengthen the walls of holes with larger diameters and strengthen the walls of micropores. And the strength and hardness of the strengthened hole wall are remarkably improved, and the surface layer has helpful remaining compression stress and it can obtain higher size accuracy and lower surface roughness and directly act as the final procedure of hole machining.

The invention discloses an edge information-based multi-scale blurred image blind restoration method, which comprises the following steps of: circularly and gradually restoring an image from a small scale layer to a large scale layer, setting self-adaptive parameters at different scales, and processing each scale layer, namely bilaterally filtering the restored image to obtain an image of which the noise and ripple are removed; performing shock wave filtering to obtain an image with high-strength contrast edges; solving the edges, and combining a fuzzy core initial value and a fuzzy graph to obtain an accurate fuzzy core; restoring a fuzzy image at the current scale to obtain a clear restored image by using the solved fuzzy core; sampling and amplifying in the current scale layer to obtain the restored image and a fuzzy core initial value of an adjacent large scale layer, and performing cycle operation on the adjacent large scale layer. The edge information-based multi-scale blurred image blind restoration method can effectively converge various images in different fuzzy degrees, and compared with a general blind restoration method which directly solves the energy minimization, the blurred image blind restoration method has the advantages of low computational complexity and high noise suppression capacity.

The invention discloses a hypersonic aerocraft and air inlet internal and external waverider integrated design method, and relates to a near space aerocraft. An aerodynamics characteristic is firstly appointed, and then a design scheme meeting the characteristic is inferred backwards; a three-dimensional shock wave curved surface in a complex shape is appointed, the change rule of the transverse curvature center is obtained, and a series of basic flow fields meeting the needs of the waverider design are inferred backwards according to the change rule; flow lines of different curvature centers and different radial positions are traced in every basic flow field in the circumferential direction; a waverider device capable of producing the appointed complex three-dimensional shock wave curved surface is obtained finally, namely the integrated design scheme is obtained. The advantages of a waveriders and an internal waverider air inlet are kept, the integrated design of the two high-performance devices is achieved, the waverider model with high lift-drag ratio and the scheme of the air inlet with full-flow capture can be obtained at the same time, and accordingly the overall performance of the aerocraft is improved.