Page 11 - Volume 8, Issue 4 - Winter 2012

and malignant tumors, to acoustic hemostasis, sonothrombolysis (non-invasive treatment of strokes), and ultrasound-assisted drug delivery. Recent advances that are illustrated here are trans-skull brain surgery and ultrasound-induced nerve modulation. Although most HIFU treatments utilize the thermal effects of ultrasound, i.e., thermal necrosis of the target tissue volumes heated by ultrasound, newer technologies exploit different physical phenomena, such as the direct mechanical bioeffects of
ultrasound. One of these recent new methods overviewed here is “histotripsy”—mechanical ablation of tissue using shock waves and bubbles.
Current medical ultrasound technologies are based on new interesting physical phenomena, biophysics, engineer- ing solutions, and exciting interdisciplinary studies. We hope that some of the examples of recent developments pre- sented in this issue will be of general interest to the acoustics community and to a wider scientific audience.
From the Guest Editor 7