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A helmet of a thousand ultrasound emitters, or a small implant under the skull, that sends sound through the bone into the brain. Approved for tremor, it is being tested in brain tumours to open the brain's protective barrier for a few hours so that drugs can reach the tumour.
Insightec's Exablate Neuro places the patient's shaved head, fixed in a stereotactic frame, inside a hemispherical transducer of over a thousand elements filled with cooled degassed water, inside an MRI scanner. CT of the skull lets the software correct each element's phase for the bone it passes through, so the beams converge on a target a few millimetres across. At high intensity the system ablates tissue, the basis of its approval for essential tremor in 2016; at low intensity with intravenous microbubbles it makes the vessel walls of the blood-brain barrier temporarily permeable, the mode being trialled in glioblastoma with temozolomide or chemotherapy, in brain metastases with antibodies, and for releasing tumour DNA into the blood as a liquid biopsy. Sunnybrook in Toronto performed the first such openings in brain tumour patients and continues the trials. Carthera's SonoCloud takes a different route: a small unfocused ultrasound implant fixed in the skull window left after tumour surgery, activated at each chemotherapy visit to open the barrier across a wide region in a few minutes without MRI. NaviFUS in Taiwan uses a neuronavigated headset.
Both approaches are still investigational for cancer. The helmet demands MRI time, head shaving and a frame, and reaches only a limited volume per session; the implant covers more brain but needs surgery to place and cannot be steered. Whether opening the barrier improves survival is the question the current trials are asking.
Phase-corrected ultrasound from a hemispherical array, or an implanted transducer, passes through the skull; at low intensity with circulating microbubbles it transiently opens the blood-brain barrier, and at high intensity it thermally ablates a focal target under MRI thermometry.
Two technology pages on OnCo cite this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing pages listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
One technology page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Transcranial focused ultrasound systems" OR ABSTRACT:"Transcranial focused ultrasound systems" OR TITLE:"Exablate Neuro, SonoCloud" OR ABSTRACT:"Exablate Neuro, SonoCloud") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Transcranial focused ultrasound systems (Exablate Neuro, SonoCloud), not a curated reading list.
Shares Brain metastases (intracranial disease), Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac SRS) and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Sonodynamic therapy, Laser interstitial thermal therapy systems (NeuroBlate, Visualase) and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac SRS), Glioma & glioblastoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Glioma & glioblastoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Brain metastases (intracranial disease) and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares MRI and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares MRI and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Glioma & glioblastoma and the tag machines-wave2.