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Ultrasound imaging of the brain

alephneuro.com

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Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#91

Post by insane_dreamer »

tokyovigilante wrote: post #73

This is complete nonsense. Ultrasound can’t effectively penetrate the skull. The entire thing (and Midjourney’s) is vibed-up nonsense. The only reason this even exists as a brainfart and hasn’t been immediately laughed out of VC funding is because other imaging modalities require either ionising radiation (illegal to produce without source licences) or an enormous magnet (would be wildly unsafe in the hands of what a…

It definitely can penetrate the skull, and transcranial focused ultrasound has been around for a few years now with plenty of studies.

So that development isn't new; what's new is to use it broadly for imaging instead of for highly targeted stimulation.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#92

Post by SubiculumCode »

rich_sasha wrote: post #7

I thought the whole "we can guess what you're thinking from an MRI" thing was BS, along the lines: take a small set of photos, image people's brains as they are looking at these pictures, to map to some low-dimensional vector of "brain activity". Then show them some of these (in sample!) pictures, measure the vector of activity and predict back what they were looking at. Happy to be corrected. But if that's right the…

1. Yes, that is generally what those studies did. 2. Th studies are not BS, the popular press description of those studies is BS.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#93

Post by SubiculumCode »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #92
rich_sasha wrote: post #7

I thought the whole "we can guess what you're thinking from an MRI" thing was BS, along the lines: take a small set of photos, image people's brains as they are looking at these pictures, to map to some low-dimensional vector of "brain activity". Then show them some of these (in sample!) pictures, measure the vector of activity and predict back what they were looking at. Happy to be corrected. But if that's right the…

1. Yes, that is generally what those studies did. 2. Th studies are not BS, the popular press description of those studies is BS.

The patterns and locations of activations might be predictive within a sample of images, but cannot discriminate in other samples. The temporal and spatial resolution is too low.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#94

Post by insane_dreamer »

Interesting technology, and of course transcranial ultrasound has been around for a while. But ultrasound even at low doses, does stimulate neurons in the brain, and so until we have more data I would be careful about applying it to the entire brain or portions thereof. transcranial focused ultrasound, which has been studied and shows great potential in medical or therapeutic domains, is highly precise, and even then we see that it can have adverse neuropsychological effects depending on the area stimulated, frequency, used, duration, and natural variance between individuals.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#95

Post by SubiculumCode »

tokyovigilante wrote: post #73

This is complete nonsense. Ultrasound can’t effectively penetrate the skull. The entire thing (and Midjourney’s) is vibed-up nonsense. The only reason this even exists as a brainfart and hasn’t been immediately laughed out of VC funding is because other imaging modalities require either ionising radiation (illegal to produce without source licences) or an enormous magnet (would be wildly unsafe in the hands of what a…

There is a line of research right now using ultrasound as a king of treatment for mental disorders, similar to TMS approaches. It's not that the sound can't get there, it's whether you can get information back from it.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#96

Post by fc417fc802 »

lostlogin wrote: post #90
fc417fc802 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there could be some clever ways to reduce costs running them after hours. It seems like a dedicated round the clock facility housing at least dozens of MRI machines ought to offer significant economies of scale. I wonder if I'm wrong about that or if there's some other reason we don't see this approach taken by governments.

The staffing costs then skyrocket. 1.5x or double time. However, the main obstacle is a lack of staff. Good staff are hard to find and worth what they cost. And they usually don't want to work out of hours. The economies of scale are interesting. Eg PACS/RIS cost very little more when you increase scans done, and rent is a fixed cost. The best thing that happens are you increase scanners at a the management of no-sho…

> 1.5x or double time.

Is the premium really that large for the night shift at (for example) a hospital? But even if you can't do 24/7 presumably there are physicians and technicians who would be willing to do either early morning or late evening without demanding much of a premium.

A massive daytime only facility should at least enjoy reduced capex and maintenance burdens if they have enough machines in one place. Less duplicated infrastructure and everything closer at hand.

Although if as you say even a small service can paper over 6 DNAs without missing a slot then maybe there isn't all that much to be gained here.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#97

Post by byw »

jmount wrote: post #59
scratcheee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MRIs are fundamentally expensive. Yes we can bring the price down a bit, and we can set more money aside for them, but they’ll always be limited by their price. Even if this technique is much worse (I can certainly believe it is) the price might allow uses that would never be practical with MRI even with the best financial support. For example, ultrasound might be viable for use in GPs or small medical facilities whi…

Why would they remain fundamentally expensive? It is a fixed machine (so eventually you recoup the investment) and running consumes nothing other than electricity and a paper gown. MRIs cost under $200 in Japan.

Is $200 close to what it costs the hospital, or after subsidies?

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#98

Post by tokyovigilante »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #91
tokyovigilante wrote: post #73

This is complete nonsense. Ultrasound can’t effectively penetrate the skull. The entire thing (and Midjourney’s) is vibed-up nonsense. The only reason this even exists as a brainfart and hasn’t been immediately laughed out of VC funding is because other imaging modalities require either ionising radiation (illegal to produce without source licences) or an enormous magnet (would be wildly unsafe in the hands of what a…

It definitely can penetrate the skull, and transcranial focused ultrasound has been around for a few years now with plenty of studies. So that development isn't new; what's new is to use it broadly for imaging instead of for highly targeted stimulation.

Not to the level of clarity and detail presented here, which is not possible from a basic acoustics physics premise. The “technical blog” is marketing fluff.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#99

Post by throwaway81523 »

robbiep wrote: post #88
scratcheee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MRIs are fundamentally expensive. Yes we can bring the price down a bit, and we can set more money aside for them, but they’ll always be limited by their price. Even if this technique is much worse (I can certainly believe it is) the price might allow uses that would never be practical with MRI even with the best financial support. For example, ultrasound might be viable for use in GPs or small medical facilities whi…

The methods described in the main article refer specifically to neurovascular imaging. In order to have a higher resolution, they’re making use of microbubbles (which need to be prepared and injected just prior to imaging). There is no world where vascular imaging with a methodology like this is better than what I can do today in a GP clinic with a handheld GE or butterfly (or similar) US probe for anything that matt…

They are claiming to want to detect CTE which normally is only diagnosable in an autopsy, I thought. Can current MRI do that? Right now we get former NFL players offing themselves with gunshots to the chest, intentionally leaving the brain intact for postmortem scanning, so posterity can figure out what was wrong with them. It's painful to think about.

Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain

#100

Post by Alien1Being »

switchbak wrote: post #40
thaw13579 wrote: post #38

Cool work and proof of concept, and very excited to see where this goes. However, I do think there is enough exaggeration and missing information here that it warrants some critical appraisal. What's really missing is a comparison and validation with any existing medical imaging tech. Whole brain, contrast-free neurovascular imaging is essentially solved with MRI, why not run a scan and compare? Ultrasound is of cour…

"MRIs are actually widely available in most cities at reasonable cost" - I live in one of those first-world countries, and our citizens regularly wait many months if not over a year to get a single MRI scan. Yes, it's not just an issue of the MRI but the entire medical system, but the point still stands. Were there machines that were one or more orders of magnitude cheaper and simpler to run - I think we would see a…

Your country has decided to ration MRIs.

Here in Australia, it is a one to two day wait for a MRI. Costs 240 AUD, (160 USD ) for a 1.5 Tesla MRI and AUD 400 for a 3 Tesla MRI just up the road.

And if I mark the request Urgent, I can send a patient 5 minutes up the road and have it done within the hour.

Are you in the UK ? I know that the UK health system has effectively collapsed, due to that country's poverty and chaos.

Even in Sudan the waiting time is less than in your country:

"Due to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, healthcare infrastructure and diagnostic imaging services have faced severe disruptions, with wait times for an MRI now extending from several weeks to months"

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