A group of Swiss clinicians is reporting the successful use of MRI-guided transcranial high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to treat brain disease.
HIFU systems send highly focused ultrasound beams into patients under MRI guidance, coagulating tissue by heating it to a focal temperature of 60° C. HIFU has already been used for a number of years to treat uterine fibroids and tumors of the prostate gland, but use of HIFU through the intact skull for noninvasive neurosurgery was not possible until recently.
As part of a clinical study at the MR-Center of the University Children's Hospital Zurich, researchers demonstrated the safety and efficacy of HIFU for noninvasive brain interventions. Since September 2008, researchers have treated 10 patients with a commercially available HIFU system (ExAblate 4000, InSightec, Tirat Carmel, Israel) in combination with a 3-tesla MRI scanner (GE Healthcare, Chalfont St. Giles, U.K.).
All interventions were completed successfully and without complications. The entire surgical procedure lasts several hours and is performed without anesthesia.
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![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
