Abstract
Transcranial MR-guided Focused ultrasound (tcMRgFUS) is a surgical procedure that adopts focused ultrasounds beam towards a specific therapeutic target through the intact skull. The convergence of focused ultrasound beams onto the target produces tissue effects through released energy. Regarding neurosurgical applications, tcMRgFUS has been successfully adopted as a non-invasive procedure for ablative purposes such as thalamotomy, pallidotomy, and subthalamotomy for movement disorders. Several studies confirmed the effectiveness of tcMRgFUS in the treatment of several neurological conditions, ranging from motor disorders to psychiatric disorders. Moreover, using low-frequencies tcMRgFUS systems temporarily disrupts the blood–brain barrier, making this procedure suitable in neuro-oncology and neurodegenerative disease for controlled drug delivery. Nowadays, tcMRgFUS represents one of the most promising and fascinating technologies in neuroscience. Since it is an emerging technology, tcMRgFUS is still the subject of countless disparate studies, even if its effectiveness has been already proven in many experimental and therapeutic fields. Therefore, although many studies have been carried out, many others are still needed to increase the degree of knowledge of the innumerable potentials of tcMRgFUS and thus expand the future fields of application of this technology.
Highlights
The employment of acoustic energy for diagnostic purposes represented 20th century medicine as the achievement of a great goal
The purpose of this study is to investigate potential future applications of tcMRgFUS
Publication time was restricted to the last four years to achieve a careful insight on future perspectives of tcMRgFUS
Summary
The employment of acoustic energy for diagnostic purposes represented 20th century medicine as the achievement of a great goal. Some physical parameters are characteristic of a specific medium influence ultrasound delivery; these are propagation speed (which depends on the density and compressibility of the medium) and the acoustic impedance (which measures the forces that oppose the transmission of waves). These parameters vary from medium to medium and, from tissue to tissue. In the last few decades, many studies showed how ultrasounds could be used for clinical or intraoperative diagnostic purposes for therapeutics [1]
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