Gamma Knife is used in brain lesions where focused ultrasound is not a viable treatment option or likely to ever be.
esafak 10/14/2025||
Is ultrasound preferable where it is viable?
zzzeek 10/14/2025||
I've got a node in my thyroid that can reasonably only be removed chemically, which has risks of blowing out my whole thyroid. ultrasound treatment is now available for it, however have been going to my endocrinologist every four months for a bloodwork checkup (because I need to take thyroid-suppressing drugs until the node can be removed) and am still waiting for him to have heard about this treatment outside of my own telling him so (even though his larger medical organization, NYU, offers it, it still seems to not be routine within his practice).
BurningFrog 10/14/2025|
There has to be a way to find a practice that uses this tech?
zzzeek 10/14/2025||
absoultely but I am in no hurry and I would like it to be Very Boring and Ordinary For My Particular Condition before I go anywhere near it
jijji 10/14/2025||
The only thing the article fails to mention is the use of more than one transducer used to focus multiple ultrasound beams to an intersection point in the body, increasing the heating power of all beams
infinet 10/14/2025|
There was a startup in Shanghai in the early 2000. Their device used multiple transducers. The probe was at least 40 cm in diameter. They did trials on uterine fibroids, among other diseases. One of the difficulties was while it looks good in theory, but the path ultrasound travels in the body is more complicated than, say x-ray or gamma ray. They expected a fine focal zone, but sometimes the focal zone was much larger than expected. This new wave of ultrasound equipment may have discovered better ways to control the sound beam.
jijji 10/14/2025||
it seems like the intesection point can be smaller than a grain of rice, and moved at 0.1mm three dimensionally [0]
This is amazing!
That HIFU 20 years ago used phase array to steer beam. Don't know the size of transducer. One of the tests I heard of was on a pig leg. The damage was bigger than expected, could be in the range of few centimeters, probably due to the leg has skin, subcutaneous fat, muscle and bone. All have different sound characteristic.
deep_signal 10/14/2025||
It's amazing how we're turning sound waves into healing tools.
siliconc0w 10/14/2025||
You can get a ultrasonic fat cavitation machine off Ali Express for a few hundred bucks. The technology has gotten surprisingly cheap.
ncr100 10/14/2025|
It looks like this can be used to burst and liquify body fat, near to the surface of the skin! Wild.
spockz 10/14/2025||
Okay… and is that something that is beneficial? How? Will it flow out from an incision? Will it just target white or brown fat? Any other effects like also liquifying muscle tissue?
hereme888 10/15/2025||
> a hole appeared in the pig heart tissue within a minute of ultrasound application
Ok, that's gonna become a secret MI6 weapon.
fortran77 10/14/2025||
I really hope she didn't damage her (or her colleague's) hearing while doing these experiments!
breppp 10/14/2025||
It's a highly promising direction for many diseases, I specifically remember Alzheimer's as one