A study published in this month's Lancet has received a lot of media attention, getting recogniztion in such outlets as the Time, UK Telegraph, Businessweek, Marketwatch, and more.

The study, Focal therapy for localised unifocal and multifocal prostate cancer: a prospective development study, details the results of 42 patients treated with the Sonoblate HIFU system in their phase 2 clinical trial.

From the Time article:

The new study, designed as a proof-of-concept study, involved just 41 men. Doctors used MRI and mapping biopsies to locate the cancerous tissues. They then focused high-energy sound waves on the affected area, causing the cancer cells to heat up to around 80°C, which kills the cells. None of the patients reported urinary incontinence a year after treatment, and only 1 in 10 suffered from poor erections. Overall, about 95% of the men were cancer-free after a full year following the trial.

"The signal from this study is quite strong," study author Hashim Ahmed, a urologist at the University College London, told Bloomberg. "When you look at the current standard of care, there's a 1-in-3, or 1-in-2 chance of having the perfect outcome. In this study, after 12 months, it's a 9-in-10 chance."

Our annual progress report on the activities of the Foundation and the advancing field of focused ultrasound has been released.

"In 2011 the revolution began in earnest as judged by a palpable increase in the enthusiasm and interest of stakeholders in the focused ultrasound community, including physicians, scientists, manufacturers, patients, regulatory agencies, investors, payers and the media. The spark that ignited the revolution was the essential tremor clinical trial organized by the Foundation and conducted in partnership with the University of Virginia and InSightec, the manufacturer of the focused ultrasound device used in the trial.

Capitalizing on years of hard work, innovation and risk-taking by many pioneers in industry and academia, the essential tremor trial demonstrated the enormous potential of the technology. If focused ultrasound can be used to safely reverse a long-standing neurological disability and improve quality of life by noninvasively treating an area deep in the brain through the intact scalp and skull with extreme precision and accuracy in a fully awake patient, we believe it’s also potentially capable of successfully and safely treating less sensitive tissues such as breast, liver, prostate and bone."

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Epilepsy Research UK reports that Ultrasound 'researched as epilepsy treatment.'