Ray Blackwell had just finished his shift as a canine police officer when he got a whopper of a headache. He knew he needed to get home.

"I kept calling my fiancée, Michelle, and I was talking to her, trying to talk to her, but she did not understand what I was saying," said study participant Ray Blackwell.

Blackwell made it home but woke up in the hospital.

"I was just happy that I was alive," he said.

At just 38, Blackwell had suffered a stroke from an intra-cerebral hemorrhage. A blood vessel had burst in his brain and formed a clot.

"It's been described as looking like red currant jelly. It's a semi solid material that forms and can cause pressure on the brain," said neurosurgeon Dr. David Newell.

Newell used a new minimally invasive procedure that uses ultrasound energy. Surgeons drill a small hole in the patient's skull and use a catheter, guided by GPS technology, to deliver ultrasound to the site of the clot.

Over the next 24 hours, ultrasound waves help drugs dissolve the clot, while blood is drained out.

"Ghe magic of this new device is that it can be introduced into the hemorrhage with very, very minimal trauma," said Newell.

Blackwell says he can run and walk but still has some difficulty with speech. Despite it all, he hopes to be back at work and marry Michelle soon. Half of all patients who suffer an intra-cerebral brain hemorrhage die and the majority of survivors have significant motor and cognitive disability.

It occurs in more than 100,000 Americans per year. Currently there is no effective treatment, so researchers hope to push ahead with a new, larger clinical trial soon.