Making surgery scalpels from sound waves

Sound waves are used in many imaging applications, but they're often underpowered and hard to focus. But focus them into "sound bullets" and all sorts of interesting things happen.

A paper published in PNAS this week describes how scientists might transition from creating sound-based images with linear acoustic dynamics to using nonlinear approaches. Researchers created a system with an acoustic lens that can focus highly tunable and accurate signals into "sound bullets." Once researchers have slightly better control over them, the bullets could be used for everything from detecting objects underwater to acting as nonintrusive scalpels in certain kinds of surgery.

ars technica