"This is a global science and technology competition," said Professor Wang Zhibiao, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Ultrasound in Medicine and Engineering.
Wang Zhibiao (right) is instructing clinicians to do preoperative examinations for patients. (Photo/ Visual Chongqing)
In the 1940s, American scholars first proposed to use high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for the non-invasive treatment of diseases in vivo. The idea attracted developed countries, including America, Germany, Britain, and Japan, to do thorough researches over the past five decades.
Nevertheless, the complexity of focusing ultrasound on biological tissues hampered the practice of non-invasive treatment.
Wang once established a research group for the biological effect of ultrasound, which is the predecessor of the State Key Laboratory of Ultrasound in Medicine and Engineering.
Experiments to build the basic theory system
Researchers use beef livers as the basic experimental material in the Basic Laboratory of the Institute of Life Sciences, Chongqing Medical University.
Researchers use beef livers as the basic experimental material. (Photo/ Visual Chongqing)
"You will see three white dots on the beef liver, and we call them 'knifepoints,'" said Wang. Wang explained they are actually the coagulation necrosis points caused by focused ultrasound when destroying tumors.
He added, previously, researchers would slice the beef liver to check whether the knifepoints were precisely in the desired positions.
What is the appropriate ratio of the ultrasonic transducer's emitting surface to the focal point's cross-section? What is the optimal range for the cross-sectional diameter of the focal point? The research group got the safest valid value and the optimal parameter respectively after thousands of experiments.
Furthermore, the experiment on using ultrasound to kill tumors without damaging the surrounding normal tissues had lasted for three years, from 1994 to 1996.
Wang said, the world's first basic theoretical system for focused ultrasound therapy was finally established, after thousands of experiments day after day, year after year, and repeated cycles from failure, analysis to re-experiment,
Ultrasound therapy technology exported worldwide
Wang explained that traditional surgery has to make an incision on the belly to treat the sick organs inside, although there is no disease on the belly's surface.
Today's mini-invasive surgery is to make a few holes in the belly, but an incision is still necessary in the case of organ disease.
However, the focused ultrasound therapy technology does not require opening or perforation in the belly but only needs to focus the extracorporeal ultrasound on the focal tissue in the body, which can kill the focal tissue while preserving the organ surface and belly.
Supported by Chongqing Medical University and the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing Haifu Medical Technology Co., Ltd. has achieved an in-depth integration of industry, university, research, and application, according to Wang. As a result, in 1999, HIFU®, the world's first extracorporeal focused ultrasound tumor therapeutic system, was put into use in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University.
On April 18, China's self-developed HIFU® tumor treatment technology landed in Mexico. (Photo/ Xinhua)
So far, the focused ultrasound therapy devices developed by the research group have been exported to 28 countries and regions to treat more than 170,000 patients with diverse solid tumors.
Chongqing Haifu Hospital is hailed as the world's first hospital specialized in mini-invasive and noninvasive treatment, demonstrating the highest application level of focused ultrasound therapy technology.