Ultrasound technology is used in many ways. Addiction is the next frontier [Video]

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Nestled inside a giant MRI machine, the woman wears a helmet outfitted with special probes. Peering through high-tech goggles, she sees images designed to trigger the awful, familiar cravings that have wrecked her life.

Heroin residue on tin foil. Lines of powder cocaine. Pain pills scattered on a table.

At the same time, scientists buzz around a small observation room, scrutinizing brain scans on computer monitors, calibrating measurements, tweaking data points. Beams of ultrasound waves fire into a tiny sector of the woman’s brain by the hundreds – an experimental treatment that researchers hope will essentially reset her mind and ease her cravings for drugs.

The April clinical trial session at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute opens a window into a growing school of research that repurposes a tried-and-true scientific tool, ultrasound, in a more focused fashion. The use of the high-frequency sound waves is being …