Canadian team treating brain diseases with therapeutic ultrasound guided by MRI
An application of MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is showing good promise for treating a number of brain diseases non-invasively and without harming healthy tissue surrounding the target.
The technique is being advanced by professors and clinicians at the University of Calgary.
The news office of U-Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute reports on the work by way of announcing an infusion of $3.2 million (Canadian) in research funding from the independent, not-for-profit Canada Foundation for Innovation.
Research team leader Bruce Pike, PhD, calls the budding technology “revolutionary,” underscoring that it enables precise neurosurgery to be performed without so much as breaking the patient’s skin.
“We are also exploring the technology’s ability to help deliver drugs directly to brain tumors and to precisely stimulate brain tissue on the millimeter scale,” Pike adds. “This remarkable technology offers a vast range of potential applications—from treating movement disorders to epilepsy to Alzheimer’s disease.”
In fact, that future has already begun to arrive: Researchers working on the project have so far completed several procedures.
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.