Neuro Interventional

Matthew Amans, MD, MSc, has been elected Radiology Member at Large of the 2023 Board of Directors for the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS), the leading multidisciplinary scientific and educational association dedicated to advancing the field. 

In September 2021, Kevin Tuckman, a 48-year-old sales manager, was doing a demo for a potential client in Foster City when he started having difficulty talking. "I would want to say something, and some words came out, but others I couldn't say," Tuckman said. After he dropped his pen five times within a one-minute period, Tuckman's colleague, Melissa Jackson, asked him if he was OK. Eventually, Jackson said: "You aren't OK, we need to take you to the hospital."

A UCSF team that includes members of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, is addressing new clinical and research neuro applications of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) and Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound (LIFU). A time will present their work on brain applications of HIFU and LIFU in an upcoming webinar on March 28 at noon PDT.  

Effective November 1, 2022, the UCSF Radiology Neurointerventional Radiology (NIR) faculty will join UCSF Neurosurgery Cerebrovascular Surgery faculty to establish a new transdisciplinary service line: Neuroendovascular Surgery (NES). This service line is a partnership between the Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging and the Department of Neurological Surgery and sponsored by the UCSF School of Medicine and UCSF Health.

Steven Hetts, MD was named a fellow of the American College of Radiology (ACR) during their 2022 Annual Meeting. 

Van Halbach, MD recently gave the Grant Hieshima Luminary Lecture at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) Annual Meeting. This is the SNIS' biggest honor and the first year of the lecture's investiture for late Grant Hieshima, MD, longtime UCSF faculty member and NeuroIR pioneer.

UC San Francisco is the only JCAHO Comprehensive Stroke Center in San Francisco. What does this mean? According to Steven Hetts, MD, this means that we have extensive capabilities to diagnose and treat all types of strokes.

Pulsatile tinnitus (PT) is a symptom that affects nearly five million Americans. At UCSF, we use a multidisciplinary approach to diagnose, treat and study PT.

Steven Hetts, MD, and a team from his lab, UC Berkeley and Carbon Inc. (3D printer) developed a drug sponge, that removes excess chemotherapy from the blood while treating tumors, preventing toxicity.

The following is a guest post from Keith Kim, a UC Berkeley Bioengineering student who participated in the Summer Biodesign Immersion Experience. Through the BIE Cohort, Keith and his classmates had the opportunity to observe some medical procedures done at the NeuroIR in real-time.