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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 eve

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 appear to be circus clowns). Geoffrey Hinton was hilariously wrong 10 years ago about replacing radiologists, and this is just embarrassing. Maybe try fixing US healthcare funding instead if you want cheaper scans.

fastball 4mo ago
Ultrasound can penetrate the skull, esp if through a thin part of the skull (like the temporal bone, which going from the graphic on the website is exactly where they are targeting these waves) and with targeted frequencies. You are misinformed.
- tokyovigilante 4mo ago
  I am a consultant radiologist. Tell that to my 6-month old infants who require MRI with GA because their fontanelles are closed. Transtemporal can give you a poorly resolved image of the 3rd ventricle at a pinch. “Targeted frequencies” - righto.
  - DoctorOetker 4mo ago
    it's widely accepted that ultrasound applied to the skull is even audible, this was discovered shortly after WWII: Gavreau in 1948 and then Pumphrey in 1950, who proposed the middle ear ossicles simply form a low-pass filter, although the situation is a lot more cloudy to this day: the topotonic relationship or the subjective frequencies don't seem to correspond to their actual frequencies. It's unclear if that is due to intermodulation distortion (non-linear frequency mixing) or perhaps even simply the frequency relationships being novel to the untrained ear (for the first time exposed to ultrasound, well not really, when biting on food or generally clenching the teeth and associated friction between upper and lower teeth are bound to emit countless ultrasounds, but not exactly harmonic oscillators, so perhaps the brain has only learn't time domain associations and little to no frequency domain associations for these higher frequencies) If you believe ultrasound categorically can not penetrate the skull, while the much longer used Weber and Rinne tests clearly demonstrate bone conduction of sounds by placing a tuning fork against the skull, so I wonder how you explain that: audible frequencies can pass but independently defined ultrasound is unable to pass?
    - tokyovigilante 4mo ago
      > If you believe ultrasound categorically can not penetrate the skull No, of course bone can conduct sound, like any other solid. What I said was ultrasound cannot *effectively* penetrate, ie get a diagnostic image back out in an adult. This is what is being purported here, and is the nonsensical part.
insane_dreamer 4mo ago
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.
- tokyovigilante 4mo ago
  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.
  - insane_dreamer 4mo ago
    that's why I said: "what's new is to use it broadly for imaging"
    - tokyovigilante 4mo ago
      That’s the made up part though.
      - insane_dreamer 4mo ago
        right, that may indeed be so
SubiculumCode 4mo ago
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.

fastball 4mo ago

Ultrasound can penetrate the skull, esp if through a thin part of the skull (like the temporal bone, which going from the graphic on the website is exactly where they are targeting these waves) and with targeted frequencies. You are misinformed.

tokyovigilante 4mo ago
I am a consultant radiologist. Tell that to my 6-month old infants who require MRI with GA because their fontanelles are closed. Transtemporal can give you a poorly resolved image of the 3rd ventricle at a pinch. “Targeted frequencies” - righto.
- DoctorOetker 4mo ago
  it's widely accepted that ultrasound applied to the skull is even audible, this was discovered shortly after WWII: Gavreau in 1948 and then Pumphrey in 1950, who proposed the middle ear ossicles simply form a low-pass filter, although the situation is a lot more cloudy to this day: the topotonic relationship or the subjective frequencies don't seem to correspond to their actual frequencies. It's unclear if that is due to intermodulation distortion (non-linear frequency mixing) or perhaps even simply the frequency relationships being novel to the untrained ear (for the first time exposed to ultrasound, well not really, when biting on food or generally clenching the teeth and associated friction between upper and lower teeth are bound to emit countless ultrasounds, but not exactly harmonic oscillators, so perhaps the brain has only learn't time domain associations and little to no frequency domain associations for these higher frequencies) If you believe ultrasound categorically can not penetrate the skull, while the much longer used Weber and Rinne tests clearly demonstrate bone conduction of sounds by placing a tuning fork against the skull, so I wonder how you explain that: audible frequencies can pass but independently defined ultrasound is unable to pass?
  - tokyovigilante 4mo ago
    > If you believe ultrasound categorically can not penetrate the skull No, of course bone can conduct sound, like any other solid. What I said was ultrasound cannot *effectively* penetrate, ie get a diagnostic image back out in an adult. This is what is being purported here, and is the nonsensical part.

insane_dreamer 4mo ago

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.

tokyovigilante 4mo ago
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.
- insane_dreamer 4mo ago
  that's why I said: "what's new is to use it broadly for imaging"
  - tokyovigilante 4mo ago
    That’s the made up part though.
    - insane_dreamer 4mo ago
      right, that may indeed be so

SubiculumCode 4mo ago

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.