Focused Energy:
Extraordinary Ultrasound!
Discover the power of sound you cannot hear
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Non-invasive Brain Surgery: Treating life limiting movement disorders without incisions
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Enhanced Healing: Using specific sound frequencies to speed up healing in damaged tissues and bones
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Revolutionary Drug Delivery: Creating new ways to deliver medication, especially to the brain and through the intestinal wall
Join us at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2025 to explore how ultrasound—sound waves beyond human hearing—is revolutionising medicine in extraordinary ways.
Most people know ultrasound from pregnancy scans, but our exhibit takes you beyond imaging into the exciting world of focused ultrasound therapy. Experience a journey from basic science and engineering through to groundbreaking medical applications that will change lives.
What You’ll Experience
- Standing Waves Create your own standing waves using ropes of different weights in this hands-on interactive exhibit
- Bat Helmets Navigate using ultrasound like a bat with our specially designed helmets for children and adults to detect insect illustrations
- Ultrasonic Levitation Place polystyrene beads in an ultrasonic field and watch them float before your eyes, made visible with smoke
- Bone Technology Explore how ultrasonic tools precisely cut and heal bones and other body tissues in this informative display
- Smart Drug Delivery Discover our enlarged model of a smart capsule creating cavitation streams, positioned alongside a digestive system model
- Incisionless Neurosurgery Use an iPad to target tremors – experiencing how we can treat brain conditions without incisions
Surgery enabled by ultrasonics
The Ultrasurge project, led by Professor Margaret Lucas at the University of Glasgow, is revolutionising surgical techniques through advanced ultrasonic technology.
Ultrasonic surgical devices are already considered the gold standard in many procedures, but we are taking this technology further by miniaturising these instruments. Our vision is to integrate these miniaturised ultrasonic tools with flexible robotic systems, enabling highly precise, minimally invasive surgeries that were previously impossible.
Incisionless Neurosurgery
Led by Consultant Neurologist Dr Tom Gilbertson, Dundee’s Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) service is revolutionising the treatment of Essential Tremor through incisionless brain surgery. MRgFUS precisely targets areas of the brain to reduce disabling tremors without any incisions, allowing patients to return home the next day with immediate, life-changing improvements.
Focused ultrasound drug delivery
Ultrasound can promote targeted drug delivery in tumours. We develop novel activatable nanoparticles utilising Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging and Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) to address unmet clinical needs.
This novel platform technology involves the labelling of proprietary drug-filled carriers for MR imaging that can help to focus thousands of ultrasound transducers on a lesion within the body. This has the advantage of concentrating the drug dose in a tumour for optimum therapeutic effect while limiting systemic toxicity.
This technology is suitable for use with both existing approved and experimental anticancer agents and it has the capacity to co-deliver drugs for combination therapy.
Visit Us
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When: 1st – 6th July 2025
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Where: The Royal Society, London
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Cost: Free admission
Meet Our Team
Our diverse team brings together researchers from the University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde, University of Dundee, and King’s College London.
From professors to PhD students, we’re passionate about harnessing ultrasonic energy for medical breakthroughs.
Fun Facts
Did you know? 2025 marks important anniversaries in ultrasound technology:
135 years since the discovery of the piezoelectric effect that enables ultrasound
15 years since the first successful treatment of essential tremor using focused ultrasound
Follow our journey to the Summer Science Exhibition: