[sniperjoe360]

Definitely a great new modality

Benefits - Can target tumor noninvasively with active imaging. No damage of nearby blood vessels.

Cons - Sound waves can only penetrate a few centimeters into the body. Also need a liquid medium to travel, ie. Can't target brain tumors because of the skull, can't target lung tumors due to presence of air.

[nicwilson]

> Cons - Sound waves can only penetrate a few centimeters into the body.

For an Air -> flesh medium interface. I'd be very surprised if they didn't couple this to gel to have gel -> flesh interface for what is done with ultrasonography (e.g. imaging for pregnancy) and the article mentions that they do ultrasonography prior to make sure they know where to aim the energy so that would make sense.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

In the video the tool looks huge, but I wonder if they could make a small version that could be inserted into the lungs like a scope.

[DoesntMatter22]

Can you just cut em open and use it on them there?

[rdmirza]

At that point you’d simply cut out the tumor.

[DoesntMatter22]

That's not accurate at all. A lot of tumors cannot be safely cut out or else they'd just cut out all tumors. Many climb around arteries and other critical areas.

Debulking most of the time isn't an option so if you can use this sound wave thing then that would be a game changer.

[DennisP]

Not necessarily. Maybe you can get to an organ but don't want to cut into the organ.