An ultrasonic scalpel for brain surgery [News]

Brain surgery is fraught with huge risks and uncertainty. Parts of the skull (and sometimes most of it) need to be removed, a lengthy and harrowing procedure that could expose the brain to infection and almost always results in significant postoperative pain. Once the surgeon makes the first incision, the smallest error could have devastating consequences- seizure, loss of sensory or motor function, stroke, or even coma. But what if you could slice through the brain without removing any of the skull-create incisions inside the brain from the outside?