Stereotactic radiosurgery

Used almost exclusively for brain tumors, this technique aims a very high-dose radiation beam at a small area during a single session. It's the dramatic procedure you see on hospital shows during which the patient's head is enclosed inside a frame to hold it still. A related technique, stereotactic radiotherapy, uses smaller, fractional doses of radiation given multiple times. This type of surgery would only be used in a breast cancer patient whose cancer had spread to the brain.