I am back from my hiatus.  That, of course, must mean at this particular moment life has slowed down.....definitely not true.  I am beginning work on a new project at the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT).  In some ways, it is a continuation of my work on a DARPA-funded project back at Stanford.  There, we were looking at peripheral tissue heating due to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU).  Now at CASIT, we are going to again look at the thermal dosing problem.  This is going to be taken a step further, in that we are using a controls engineering perspective to image a target and provide auto-feedback for adjusting the focus of the HIFU.  In essence, we would like to HIFU a target.  If that target moves (e.g. movement due to inspiration/expiration), we would like for the HIFU system to self-adjust to lock-in on its target and stay there.  Ideally, our project will be a success.  The FDA will then approve the use of HIFU for tissue ablation of tumors.  And in the process, a couple papers will be published and some grants will be attained.  As of now, all of those seem far away.  I must trek through papers and help design our methods....good stuff.