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 obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasonic energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the brain without damaging surrounding normal tissue.
How it Works
Where the beams converge, focused ultrasound produces precise ablation (thermal destruction of tissue) of the desired target which treats OCD without incisions or radiation.
Advantages
Current treatments for OCD include medications, surgery (radiofrequency or laser ablation, deep brain stimulation), or stereotactic radiosurgery (gamma knife, linear accelerator), all of which have limitations and side effects.
Focused ultrasound has the potential to provide an alternative to invasive surgery or radiosurgery via precise thermal ablation, or to augment drug therapy. It is noninvasive and has reduced risk for infection and blood clots. Focused ultrasound can also offer precise targeting to minimize damage to non-targeted healthy brain.
Clinical Trials
A clinical trial using low intensity focused ultrasound is recruiting patients with OCD.
A clinical trial in Taiwan is recruiting patients with OCD by invitation only for treatment with the Insightec device.
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/.
Find a Treatment Site
Search for a treatment center or clinical trial near you.
Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement
Focused ultrasound is not approved by any regulatory bodies worldwide as a treatment for OCD, nor is the treatment reimbursed by medical insurance providers.
Additional Resources
Notable Papers
Arulpragasam AR, Philip NS. Quiet waves, deep impact: acoustic modeling of low-intensity focused ultrasound. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2026 Jan;51(1):351-353. doi: 10.1038/s41386-025-02191-3. PMID: 40764758
Wang F, Ye K, Paerhati H, Suo J, Shen Z, Zhang J, Li D, Zhan S, Lai Y, Sun B. Imaging characteristics correlated with outcomes of cranial MRgFUS – a systematic review. Neuroimage. 2025 Nov 7;323:121571. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121571. PMID: 41207452
De Schlichting E, Huang Y, Jones RM, Meng Y, Cao X, Baskaran A, Hynynen K, Hamani C, Lipsman N, Goubran M, Davidson B. Focused ultrasound capsulotomy: predicting the probability of successful lesioning based on skull morphology. J Neurosurg. 2025 Oct 10:1-10. doi: 10.3171/2025.6.JNS2588. PMID: 41072044
Michalopoulou PG, Meshreky KM, Hommerich Z, Shergill SS. Neuromodulation and neural networks in psychiatric disorders: current status and emerging prospects. Psychol Med. 2025 Sep 26;55:e281. doi: 10.1017/S003329172510158X. PMID: 40999798
Martin E, Roberts M, Grigoras IF, Wright O, Nandi T, Rieger SW, Campbell J, den Boer T, Cox BT, Stagg CJ, Treeby BE. Ultrasound system for precise neuromodulation of human deep brain circuits. Nat Commun. 2025 Sep 5;16(1):8024. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-63020-1. PMID: 40913042
Davidson B, Xhima K, Cosgrove R, Hamani C, Eitan R, Rezai A, LeBlang S, Philip NS, Lipsman N. A roadmap for focused ultrasound applications in psychiatry: Proceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Focused Ultrasound in Psychiatry (FUS-PULSE). Brain Stimul. 2025 Aug 23:S1935-861X(25)00305-5. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2025.08.012. PMID: 40846278
Darmani G, Ramezanpour H, Sarica C, Annirood R, Grippe T, Nankoo JF, Fomenko A, Santyr B, Zeng K, Vetkas A, Samuel N, Davidson B, Fasano A, Lankarany M, Kalia SK, Pichardo S, Lozano AM, Chen R. Individualized non-invasive deep brain stimulation of the basal ganglia using transcranial ultrasound stimulation. Nat Commun. 2025 Mar 19;16(1):2693. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-57883-7.PMID: 40108143
Riva-Posse P, Figee M. A Safe Step in the Right Direction: Focused Ultrasound in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Depression. Biol Psychiatry. 2025 Apr 1;97(7):664-665. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2025.01.024. PMID: 40086896
de Souza DN, Seas A, Blethen K, Feigal J, Shah BR, Grant GA, Harward SC. Focused ultrasound as an emerging therapy for neuropsychiatric disease: Historical perspectives and a review of current clinical data. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2025 Feb 12. doi: 10.1111/pcn.13799. PMID: 39936841
Chou T, Kochanowski BJ, Hayden A, Borron BM, Barbeiro MC, Xu J, Kim JW, Zhang X, Bouchard RR, Phan KL, Goodman WK, Dougherty DD. A Low-Intensity Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Parameter Exploration Study of the Ventral Capsule/Ventral Striatum. Neuromodulation. 2025 Jan;28(1):146-154. doi: 10.1016/j.neurom.2024.03.004. Epub 2024 Apr 29. PMID: 38691076
Chang KW, Chang JG, Jung HH, Kim CH, Chang JW, Kim SJ. Long-term clinical outcome of a novel bilateral capsulotomy with focused ultrasound in refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment. Mol Psychiatry. 2024 Oct 28. doi: 10.1038/s41380-024-02799-9. PMID: 39468190
Hamani C, Davidson B, Rabin JS, Goubran M, Boone L, Hynynen K, De Schlichting E, Meng Y, Huang Y, Jones RM, Baskaran A, Marawi T, Richter MA, Levitt A, Nestor SM, Giacobbe P, Lipsman N. Long-term safety and efficacy of focused ultrasound capsulotomy for obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2024 Aug 24:S0006-3223(24)01548-8. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.08.015. PMID: 39187171
Henn MC, Smith HD, Lopez Ramos CG, Shafie B, Abaricia J, Stevens I, Rockhill AP, Cleary DR, Raslan AM. A systematic review of focused ultrasound for psychiatric disorders: current applications, opportunities, and challenges. Neurosurg Focus. 2024 Sep 1;57(3):E8. doi: 10.3171/2024.6.FOCUS24278. PMID: 39217636
Hurwitz TA, Avecillas-Chasin JM, Bogod NM, Honey CR. Ventral targeted anterior capsulotomy for treatment-resistant depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder: A treatment method with cases. J Affect Disord. 2024 Jan 23;350:887-894. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.01.176. PMID: 38272366
Guinjoan SM. Personalized Definition of Surgical Targets in Major Depression and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Potential Role for Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound? Pers Med Psychiatry. 2023;37-38:100100. doi: 10.1016/j.pmip.2023.100100. Epub 2023 Feb 27.
Chang JG, Kim DW, Jung HH, Chang WS, Kim CH, Kim SJ, Chang JW. Evaluation of changes in neural oscillation after bilateral capsulotomy in treatment refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder using magnetoencephalogram. Asian J Psychiatr. 2023 Jan 20;82:103473. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2023.103473.
Mustroph ML, Cosgrove GR, Williams ZM. The Evolution of Modern Ablative Surgery for the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive and Major Depression Disorders. Front Integr Neurosci. 2022 Apr 6;16:797533. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2022.797533. eCollection 2022.
Click here for additional references from PubMed.