According to the results of 2018, the LIMU project “Physical principles and development of high intensity focused ultrasound medical transducers for shock wave treatments in inhomogeneous biological tissues” was recognized as one of the best projects supported by the Russian Science Foundation.

During recent years, the attention of physicians has increasingly turned to the development of new methods for the destruction of deeply located structures in the human body without damaging the overlying tissues. One of the most promising noninvasive methods is the use of high intensity focused ultrasound. Until recently, the destruction of tissues in clinical focusing ultrasound systems was achieved by heating the focal region of the ultrasound beam up to the temperatures of thermal necrosis. LIMU scientists together with their colleagues from the University of Washington have developed an alternative and significantly safer method. The method is based on the use of nonlinear shock-wave effects in pulsed ultrasonic fields for the mechanical destruction of tissues. To realize the proposed method, scientists have developed a new design of high-power phased arrays with a random arrangement of radiating elements in the form of polygons of the same area and the most dense filling factor. To control the effects and analyze the resulting damage to tissue, a new approach allows the use of ultrasound imaging instead of expensive magnetic resonance imaging.