Imagine a future where we could distill some kind of “weights” from living human brains when we’ve run out of quality training data for AI using this tech.
Ultrasound imaging of the brain
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scarcity comes from waiting to get preapproval from your physician and health insurance. If you are willing to pay out of pocket, there are many private MRI clinics that will scan you to your heart's content, as quickly as you want, as long as the payment clears. Granted, anything you find in that reading won't be accepted by your physician or insurance company, so it's more of a checkup for you and you alone. An…
> anything you find in that reading won't be accepted by your physician or insurance company, Surely that it isn't the norm? Where do you live that the (I assume government run) health system dismisses evidence when its collection wasn't sanctioned by official channels?
They are mistaken. I am a practicing radiologist in the US. We regularly work-up findings from private pay whole body screening MRIs and the workups are covered by insurance.
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#103Cool 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 Typical wait time for an MRI in Canada is 2 months.
Depends for what reason. I trained in Canada. Studies are triaged priority 1 through 4 in most provinces. Nowhere in Canada is a high priority MRI waiting 2 months.
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#104It feels like ultrasound is solving everything for the last week.
There were a lot of people who declared very loudly last week during the Midjourney discourse that this was an impossible use of ultrasound.
Half baked images? No one said that is impossible.
I am skeptical of any brain ultrasound claim that doesn’t use skull correction which requires a CT scan.
Very large chunks of vasculature and major arteries are missing in the images they provided. Just because it’s pretty and colorful it doesn’t mean it’s useful.
Perhaps it will one day, but this doesn’t prove much so far. There are several physical challenges to using ultrasound.
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#105How about just getting it more established in orthopedic practices so patients aren't required to 1. See ortho for MRI referral 2. schedule mri at imaging facility 3. PAY $750 - $3000 for an MRI 4. Wait to get back into ortho. I really don't understand why a fetus' heart can be examined for defects, but you can't use it in the office to tell me if my labrum is torn?
Ultrasound is very operator dependent. Shoulder ultrasound is very hard. Visualizing the labrum let alone detecting pathology is very very hard and you will miss huge chunks of it due to limited windows.
Ignoring all of this, there are few sub specialist radiologists in the world who could theoretically do this and if you were to pay for their time it would cost more than a highly reproducible and easy to get MRI.
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. L…
I’ve just checked the contract for the largest employer of techs (in New Zealand) and they only get 1.25X for night shifts. This is the rate at public hospitals. Private employers pay more and the penal rates are more aggressive - due in part to none of us wanting nights or weekends worked.
However that’s a bit meaningless as night shifts don’t exist. MRI is run as an oncall service and only acute scans are done at night - good luck getting a consultant to come in for anything less.
There are staff who like early starts (6am) and a smaller number who like to finish a bit later 6-9pm).
Techs are lucky enough to be in demand and if an employer pushes too hard, they’ll go somewhere that’s a better fit.
We only site 2 MRs next to each other, so savings are going to be minimal but we do see staffing advantages and less downtime. Coils scan swap between machines, one chiller can supply both MR scanners (just… be careful).
https://apex.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Te-Whatu-Ora-...
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#107Even low-dose ultrasound (what they use on pregnant woman) results in ultrastructural changes in brains [0], specifically at the nodes of Ranvier (the gaps between myelin along axons). See also [1] for a review. [0] Ellisman MH, Palmer DE, André MP (1987), "Diagnostic levels of ultrasound may disrupt myelination," Experimental Neurology 98:78–92 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3308504/ [1] Quarato, C.M.I., Lacedonia,…
All sound is vibration, so everything is affected by sound at some point as the vibrations propagate through and physically move around materials. Humans can hear because the audible frequency range moves receptors in human inner ears, and as you can imagine this isn't local to the ear, the whole brain will be affected (but biology has accounted for this). If you knock on wood that sound is audible in many frequencies--below human audible, audible and also above human audible (what we call 'ultrasound'). What is more dangerous generally is sustained noise at any frequency; lower frequency + high amplitude is one of the most harmful as that can physically push you.
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
that's why I said: "what's new is to use it broadly for imaging"
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#109Earlier 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.
With insurance in the US they’re $750 each… As in elbow and wrist on the same arm count separately…
Re: Ultrasound imaging of the brain
#110Cool 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…
As the article says, their ultrasound machine costs about as much as a smartphone. It’s about $4000. An MRI machine costs roughly 1000x as much.
A $1m machine with (say) $100k of annual operating costs with a 10-year lifespan. Assume low cost of capital, call it $200k/year for those 10 years.
The machine itself covers its cost at only ~84 monthly scans @ $200 each. That says to locate near population centers where the demand exceeds 84 scans. At the global mean of scans/population, said "population centers" only need to be about 15k residents.
Labor costs + junk fees make them appear expensive.