Introduction Brain therapy with transcranial focused ultrasound is a scientific and technological challenge [1,2]. A novel prototype is presented here (SuperSonic Imagine, France), working at the highest frequency envisioned currently for transcranial brain treatment (1MHz). A non invasive time-reversal focusing technique based on CT scans is performed for that purpose [3]. Such a brain therapy...

The discovery that ultrasound waves could be focused inside the skull and heated to high temperatures at a focal point goes back to 1944. However, because the skull causes the ultrasound waves to attenuate and scatter, it was believed that application of this technology would be difficult, and that it would be impossible to use this approach in the surgical treatment of intracranial diseases. E...

BACKGROUND Breast fibroadenomata (FAD) are the most common benign lesions in women. For palpable lesions, there are currently three standard treatment options: reassurance (with or without follow-up), vacuum-assisted mammotomy (VAM) or surgical excision. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation has been used in the treatment of FAD. The drawback of HIFU is its prolonged treatment durat...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a noninvasive treatment that induces complete coagulative necrosis of a tumor at depth through the intact skin. We evaluated a biochemical disease-free rate, safety and morbidity for localized prostate cancer treated with HIFU. A total of 132 consecutive patients with stage T1c-2N0M0 localized prostate cancer underwent HIFU using Sonablate-500 (Focus ...

Efficient driving of piezoelectric materials is desirable when operating transducers for biomedical applications such as high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) or ultrasound imaging. More efficient operation reduces the electric power required to produce the desired bioeffect or contrast. Our preliminary work [Cole et al. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 2014;26(13):135901.] suggested th...

Q Can you update us on your research group’s current work? At the moment, I am occupying three positions in The Netherlands. For 60% of my time I am at the Utrecht University (Utrecht, The Netherlands), for 20% at the University Medical Centre Utrecht hospital (UMCU; Utrecht, The Netherlands), and the other 20% I am at the University of Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands), in the east of the cou...

In recent years, noninvasive thermal treatment by using high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has high potential in tumor treatment. The goal of this research is to develop an ultrasound imaging-guided robotic HIFU ablation system for tumor treatment. The system integrates the technologies of ultrasound image-assisted guidance, robotic positioning control, and HIFU treatment planning. With t...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive technology, which can be used occlude blood vessels in the body. Both the theory underlying and practical process of blood vessel occlusion are still under development and relatively sparse in vivo experimental and therapeutic data exist. HIFU would however provide an alternative to surgery, particularly in circumstances where serious c...

The ability of ultrasonically-induced oscillations of circulating microbubbles to permeabilize vascular barriers such as the blood-brain barrier (BBB) holds great promise for noninvasive targeted drug delivery. A major issue has been a lack of control over the procedure to ensure both safe and effective treatment. Here, we evaluated the use of passively-recorded acoustic emissions as a means to...

PURPOSE To extend the previously developed temporally constrained reconstruction (TCR) algorithm to allow for real-time availability of three-dimensional (3D) temperature maps capable of monitoring MR-guided high intensity focused ultrasound applications. METHODS A real-time TCR (RT-TCR) algorithm is developed that only uses current and previously acquired undersampled k-space data from a 3D ...