A Few Words From the Editor: On the Flourishing Use of Ultrasound in Brain Imaging and Therapy

Looking back at the history of medical ultrasonics, the 1950s has been a pivotal era of William and Francis Fry and their pioneering attempts to perform neurosurgeries using confocal four ultrasound transducer system. The Fry brothers demonstrated the feasibility of applying high-intensity (“intense”) focused ultrasound to treat patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The outcome of their experiments also indicated the critical need to develop tools to provide image guidance and subsequently spurred the development of brightness-mode (B-mode) ultrasound imaging that is widely used in today’s clinical practice. In the light of these seminal contributions, it is fair to say that early developments of ultrasound applications for the brain represent a major turning point in the medical ultrasound field that is now ubiquitous in both diagnostic and therapeutic applications.