Focused Ultrasound Therapy
Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive, therapeutic technology with the potential to improve the quality of life and decrease the cost of care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasonic energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the brain without damaging the surrounding normal tissue.
How it Works
Where the beams converge, focused ultrasound produces several therapeutic effects without incisions or radiation. One mechanism is the temporary opening of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which may aid in the removal of beta amyloid or tao from the brain. In addition, potentially promising drug and antibody therapies are often limited by their inability to cross the BBB in high enough concentrations to have an impact in the brain, and opening the BBB may enable these therapeutic agents (such as intravenous immunoglobulin [IVIG]or tropomyosin receptor kinase A [TrkA])to gain access the brain. An additional mechanism is the ability to use neuromodulation to increase the activity of selected targets in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Promising preclinical studies continue to demonstrate the potential of focused ultrasound to enhance the delivery of therapeutic drugs or antibodies to the brain. Focused ultrasound in combination with microbubbles can safely open the BBB and enable enhanced delivery of anti-amyloid antibodies to the brain. Studies suggest that this method can reduce the number of plaques and improve cognition in Alzheimer’s disease models. Furthermore, focused ultrasound and microbubbles alone (no antibodies) have had similar effects in two different Alzheimer’s models. There is also work looking at using genetic therapy, where adeno-associated virus (AAV) could be used to as a one-time treatment.
Potential advantages
- Focused ultrasound is noninvasive – no incisions, holes in the skull, electrodes in the brain – and therefore has reduced risk for infection and blood clots.
- Precise targeting minimizes damage to non-targeted healthy brain.
- Treatment can be a complement to drug therapy, enabling enhanced delivery of disease-modifying therapies into the brain via temporary opening of the blood-brain barrier.
Clinical Trials
A clinical trial in Utah is treating patients with Alzheimer’s Disease with low intensity focused ultrasound.
A clinical trial in West Virginia is combining opening of the BBB with Aducanumab in patients with early cognitive disability or Alzheimer’s disease.
A second clinical trial in West Virginia is using low intensity focused ultrasound neuromodulation in the treatment of patients with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.
A Phase II trial at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada, is investigating the use of focused ultrasound to temporarily open the BBB in multiple regions of the brain.
A clinical trial in the US is opening the BBB with MR-guided focused ultrasound in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
A clinical trial with low intensity focused ultrasound treatment is being used for treatment of early cognitive disability or Alzheimer’s disease in Los Angeles.
A clinical trial in Japan is using Low Intensity Pulsed UltraSound (LIPUS) to treat patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.
See a list of treatment sites >
See a list of laboratory research sites >
The Foundation updates these pages regularly, but with the increasing number of clinical trials, we want to be sure that our audience has the latest information available. Therefore, we also added the website search information for the above trials. If you click here, it will take you to the latest information available from https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/.
Preclinical Laboratory Studies
Preclinical studies suggest focused ultrasound’s potential to reduce amyloid plaques and improve cognition in Alzheimer’s models. Active studies are assessing focused ultrasound-induced BBB opening to improve the delivery of:
- Anti-amyloid antibodies and other disease modifying drugs (Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre; Columbia University; Queensland University – Australia; Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
- Anti-tau antibodies (Queensland University – Australia).
Additional Information
Alzheimer’s Association
ExAblate Neuro by Insightec LTD
Notable Papers
Suggested Reading: Focused Ultrasound: Transforming treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases. August 2022
Suggested Reading: Focused Ultrasound for Alzheimer’s Disease. January 2022.
Thipparthy KR, Kollu A, Kulkarni C, Dutta AK, Doshi H, Kashyap A, Sinha KP, Kondaveeti SB, Gupta R. Discrete variational autoencoders BERT model-based transcranial focused ultrasound for Alzheimer’s disease detection. J Neurosci Methods. 2025 Apr;416:110386. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2025.110386. Epub 2025 Feb 3. PMID: 39909160
Gong Y, Xu K, Ye D, Yang Y, Miller MJ, Feng Z, Hu S, Chen H. In vivo two-photon microscopy imaging of focused ultrasound-mediated glymphatic transport in the mouse brain. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2025 Feb 22:271678X251323369. doi: 10.1177/0271678X251323369. PMID: 39985197
Șovrea AS, Boșca AB, Dronca E, Constantin AM, Crintea A, Suflețel R, Ștefan RA, Ștefan PA, Onofrei MM, Tschall C, Crivii CB. Non-Drug and Non-Invasive Therapeutic Options in Alzheimer’s Disease. Biomedicines. 2025 Jan 1;13(1):84. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines13010084. PMID: 39857667
Cai Q, Meng L, Quan M, Wang L, Ren J, Zheng C, Yang J, Ming D. Progress of research in the application of ultrasound technology for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Neural Regen Res. 2025 Oct 1;20(10):2823-2837. doi: 10.4103/NRR.NRR-D-24-00539. Epub 2024 Sep 24. PMID: 39314155
Koch G, Altomare D, Benussi A, Bréchet L, Casula EP, Dodich A, Pievani M, Santarnecchi E, Frisoni GB. The emerging field of non-invasive brain stimulation in Alzheimer’s disease. Brain. 2024 Nov 20:awae292. doi: 10.1093/brain/awae292. PMID: 39562009
Strohman A, Isaac G, Payne B, Verdonk C, Khalsa SS, Legon W. Low-intensity focused ultrasound to the insula differentially modulates the heartbeat-evoked potential: A proof-of-concept study. Clin Neurophysiol. 2024 Nov;167:267-281. doi: 10.1016/j.clinph.2024.09.006. Epub 2024 Sep 19. PMID: 39366795
Ye BS, Chang KW, Kang S, Jeon S, Chang JW. Repetitive and extensive focused ultrasound-mediated bilateral frontal blood-brain barrier opening for Alzheimer’s disease. J Neurosurg. 2025 Jan 10:1-8. doi: 10.3171/2024.8.JNS24989. Online ahead of print. PMID: 39793012
Jimenez-Gambin S, Bae S, Ji R, Tsitsos F, Konofagou EE. Feasibility of Hologram-assisted Bilateral Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in Non-Human Primates. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2024 Aug 28;PP. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3451289. PMID: 39196737
Scott K, Klaus SP. Focused ultrasound therapy for Alzheimer’s disease: exploring the potential for targeted amyloid disaggregation. Front Neurol. 2024 Aug 6;15:1426075. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1426075. eCollection 2024. PMID: 39165269
Ye D, Chukwu C, Yang Y, Hu Z, Chen H. Adeno-associated virus vector delivery to the brain: Technology advancements and clinical applications. Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2024 Aug;211:115363. doi: 10.1016/j.addr.2024.115363. Epub 2024 Jun 19. PMID: 38906479
Wang R, Li J. Noninvasive focused ultrasound-mediated delivery of rAAV9-EGFP vectors for neuronal targeting in rats. Neuroimage. 2024 Jul 1;294:120630. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120630. Epub 2024 May 11. PMID: 38740226
Leinenga G, Padmanabhan P, Götz J. Improving Cognition Without Clearing Amyloid: Effects of Tau and Ultrasound Neuromodulation. J Alzheimers Dis. 2024 Jul 22. doi: 10.3233/JAD-240616. PMID: 39058447
Click here for additional references from PubMed.