ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,657, issued on May 27, was assigned to Olympus Corp. (Tokyo).
"Equipment for crushing urinary stone" was invented by Soichi Ikuma (Akishima, Japan), Eijiro Sato (Hachioji, Japan) and Hiroki Kazuno (Kodaira, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A medical endoscopic device for crushing urinary stones having an insertion portion including an optical window, an illumination window, a laser fiber, an elongate internal channel, and a procedure tube coaxially and movably disposed inside the elongate internal channel is disclosed. The distal end of the procedure tube is comprised of a distal tip portion having a diameter larger than that of ...