Pei Zhong
Duke University, NC·Biomedical Engineering
Kidney and urinary stones affect about 1 in 11 Americans during their lifetime. Treating them costs more than $2 billion a year in the US.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
kidney stones
urinary stone disease
urolithiasis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Nov 2028
What they work on
- Determine optimal thulium fiber laser (TFL) settings for breaking urinary stones through in vitro studies across a wide range of laser parameters, compared with the Holmium:YAG laser.
- Explain how the TFL breaks stones and heats the surrounding fluid by combining experiments with numerical simulations of interactions among laser, fluid, bubbles and stone.
- Define the best clinical TFL lithotripsy strategy for fast stone removal with low thermal injury risk, using artificial kidney and ureter models and a pig model.
- Create a SAFE electrohydraulic shock wave generator with adjustable focal width and beam direction, plus a MiniCouple wet coupling device for better shock wave transmission to the patient.
- Develop 3D Dynamic Cavitation Monitoring to track bubble activity during shock wave lithotripsy in real time, and study how surface acoustic waves and cavitation together produce fine fragments.
More about the research
The two main treatments break stones apart with energy. Shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) is the only option that needs no incision. Laser lithotripsy is done through a thin scope passed up the urinary tract, called ureteroscopy. Both projects study how lasers, shock waves, fluid and bubbles interact with stones and tissue, with the aim of breaking stones more efficiently while reducing injury.
Why it matters
Clearer guidance on thulium fiber laser settings could help urologists remove kidney stones faster with less risk of heat injury to the ureter and kidney. Improved shock wave generators, coupling and cavitation monitoring could make non-invasive stone treatment safer and more effective. They could also give urologists more flexibility to tailor treatment, benefiting the many patients with urinary stone disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Timothy Bigelow
Iowa State University, IA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether adding lower-amplitude pulses to histotripsy, an ultrasound technique that creates bubble clouds to mechanically destroy cells, reduces cavitation memory and shortens treatment of infected hernia mesh, and measure how exposures affect mesh properties.
Olivier Coutier-Delgosha
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Engineering
Measure how the repeated growth and collapse of cavitation bubbles weakens and ruptures the surfactant film around water droplets in oil, using high-speed visualization of ultrasound-driven emulsions.
Kenneth B. Bader
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and characterize a tissue phantom, a tissue-like test material, containing an imprintable mechanophore that changes chemically under force, to record the brief stresses created by ultrasound microbubbles.
The school
Duke University: 61 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 417 research doctorates a year.
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