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Brain surgery that’s not invasive

Experimental procedure pioneered in Boston uses ultrasound to zap tumors

By Karen Weintraub

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  April 23, 2012

When Glenn German had brain surgery last year, he remained awake and chatting with his surgeons throughout the four-hour procedure. At the end, he got up from the table and walked out of the room. German’s experimental brain surgery was done without slicing open his skull. Called MRI-guided focused ultrasound, the procedure uses 1,000 otherwise-harmless ultrasound beams. Focused on one particular area of the brain, the beams heat up and kill the cells in that one spot.

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