Discovering the contribution of cavitation damage in kidney stone ablation

This proposal compares extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) and burst-wave lithotripsy (BWL) with the aim to identify the most suitable clinical modality to comminute body calculi. Addressing the active debate regarding the responsible mechanism, one of which is believed to be cavitation, and the efficiency of these two methods requires bridging the fluid dynamics and solid mechanics theories, with the ability to correlate the cavitation dynamics to the stone damage, in-situ. This will be achieved by using (ultra-fast) X-ray phase contrast imaging and µ-tomography in a corelative manner. We intend to perform experiments on different model kidney stones by means of laser-induced cavitation, ESWL and BWL, and correlate ultra-fast radiographs of in-situ cavitation-induced fracture with µ-tomographs. The results are expected to quantify and compare cavitation-induced damage and will stimulate further improvements of the patient-tailored lithotripter-based therapies.