4 ms·

Mark-1 The world’s first whole-body MRI Scanner

65 points by wallflower 7y ago

legulere 7y ago
Is it common to do a whole-body scan? Seems to me to be pretty expensive way for probably finding a lot of false positive irregularities in the body that will never cause any harm to the patient.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  It can be when tracking the spread of tumours if a cancer has metastasised. This is anecdotal evidence based on a couple of friends who underwent cancer treatment.
- justinjlynn 7y ago
  You do know that this language is historical? The MRI machines we use for modern medical practice would have been known as whole-body scanners because they are capable of scanning the whole body. This isn't about surveying the whole body as matter of course - the language is confusing though, so I understand.
- regularfry 7y ago
  There are genetic conditions which can cause problems with any artery in your body, and you really want to know if anything's likely to go pop, anywhere. When you go for a full-body scan for this they're not going fishing, they're looking for something specific being wrong in a whole-body system.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    There are plenty of for-profit ventures who'll happily scan you without anything known to be wrong, though.
    - lwhalen 7y ago
      Got a link? Depending on price, I wouldn't mind having a full-body scan of me when I'm healthy, to compare for when I'm older/infirmer/less-healthy later in life.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        If you Google "full-body MRI" you'll find lots of vendors. https://desertmedicalimaging.com/blog/whole-body-screening-mri/ https://desertmedicalimaging.com/blog/whole-body-screening-m... https://www.humanlongevity.com/whole-body-mri/ https://www.humanlongevity.com/whole-body-mri/ Buyer beware, though. Scary false positives abound and may lead to anxiety and unnecessary, invasive procedures.
      - l33tman 7y ago
        The problem is, the scans (neither MRI nor CT) are specific enough to rule out danger of some stuff you find. So the next thing is you'll need to start taking some nice needle biopsies, being worried about them.. some things you can't do with the needle biopsy and you need to actually get in there. A subset of these things you find you'll get the answer that they're tumors but harmless and let's leave them, and then you'll go worry about them for the next 10 years.. Doing medical tests without reason is a russian roulette with your psyche :) I agree in principle though that it would probably be good to have an early "baseline" full body scan and then get incremental checks every year.
- petercooper 7y ago
  It's not common in the sense that any significant %age of people have it done, but it's not unusual and there are numerous private medical screening facilities that do it for a fee. I had one done two years ago as part of a full body medical and plan to do so every two years or so in order to detect changes over the years (I was willing to take the risk of things being discovered during the first scan).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - spease 7y ago
    What’s the group that does this?
    - petercooper 7y ago
      I did it in the UK via http://www.preventicum.co.uk/ http://www.preventicum.co.uk/
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  It would be good when trying to determine if there's a build-up of plaque anywhere in a person's arteries and thus at risk of many different cardio-vascular diseases. They use special dyes injected into arteries to facilitate seeing them. Similar things are done for examining the gastrointestinal tract of those who might have cancers somewhere in it. You might also want to see if cancers have metastasized to other parts of the body to determine the extent of the disease.
  - spease 7y ago
    Re: that first paragraph, there’s a CT scan procedure that costs a modest amount that checks for plaque buildup principally in your heart. I think it’s “coronary calcium scan”. I was surprised it isn’t more well-known and widely used for screening.
- spease 7y ago
  No, oftentimes they will intentionality constrain the scan to a specific area that they’re interested in. This limits the time and cost. However there are pretty consistent scan procedures, eg they might order a “sacral MRI” for lower back issues. As others have mentioned, full body MRIs may be used for cancer that they’re concerned may have metastasized. The reluctance of people to do this is that it’s kind of “going fishing”. If they spot something weird, they may wind up having to follow up on it even if it’s probably benign. They don’t want you to come back a few years down the road and hold them responsible for not looking into an ambiguous blotch on an MRI that turned out to be cancerous rather than benign. It’s not really scalable. Someone on here did mention the idea of starting a program of doing full body scans of everybody and then building a database of what things turned out to be an issue to build a better automatic early detection system. It’s an interesting idea. That being said, having an MRI really sucks. You put on ear protection and have to lay still for dozens of minutes or hours while the machine clicks, beeps, clunks, and buzzes at ear-splitting volumes (hence the ear protection). And since an MRI acts as a huge magnet, you can’t take headphones in with you. There was one or two places I went that had non-metallic ear phones, but this seems to be exception rather than the norm. Contrast means getting an injection partway through. And even if you’ve never had problems with claustrophobia, MRIs can still trigger it (there are open MRIs, but these may compromise on resolution). So it’s very understandable that a reasonable amount of effort is made to minimize MRI time.
neonate 7y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20190416075550/http://www.ghat-art.org.uk/mark-1-the-worlds-first-whole-body-mri-scanner/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190416075550/http://www.ghat-a...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 7y ago
MRIs are crazy pieces of technology. I didn't know much about them until I had an MRI myself and went down the rabbit hole reading on the theory of their operation. You're magnetizing hydrogen, then pounding it out of alignment, and then listening for the faint radio signature of atoms moaning as they realign.
- datapunk 7y ago
  Such a fantastic visual description

65 points by wallflower 7y ago

Is it common to do a whole-body scan? Seems to me to be pretty expensive way for probably finding a lot of false positive irregularities in the body that will never cause any harm to the patient.

teh_klev 7y ago
It can be when tracking the spread of tumours if a cancer has metastasised. This is anecdotal evidence based on a couple of friends who underwent cancer treatment.
justinjlynn 7y ago
You do know that this language is historical? The MRI machines we use for modern medical practice would have been known as whole-body scanners because they are capable of scanning the whole body. This isn't about surveying the whole body as matter of course - the language is confusing though, so I understand.
regularfry 7y ago
There are genetic conditions which can cause problems with any artery in your body, and you really want to know if anything's likely to go pop, anywhere. When you go for a full-body scan for this they're not going fishing, they're looking for something specific being wrong in a whole-body system.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  There are plenty of for-profit ventures who'll happily scan you without anything known to be wrong, though.
  - lwhalen 7y ago
    Got a link? Depending on price, I wouldn't mind having a full-body scan of me when I'm healthy, to compare for when I'm older/infirmer/less-healthy later in life.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      If you Google "full-body MRI" you'll find lots of vendors. https://desertmedicalimaging.com/blog/whole-body-screening-mri/ https://desertmedicalimaging.com/blog/whole-body-screening-m... https://www.humanlongevity.com/whole-body-mri/ https://www.humanlongevity.com/whole-body-mri/ Buyer beware, though. Scary false positives abound and may lead to anxiety and unnecessary, invasive procedures.
    - l33tman 7y ago
      The problem is, the scans (neither MRI nor CT) are specific enough to rule out danger of some stuff you find. So the next thing is you'll need to start taking some nice needle biopsies, being worried about them.. some things you can't do with the needle biopsy and you need to actually get in there. A subset of these things you find you'll get the answer that they're tumors but harmless and let's leave them, and then you'll go worry about them for the next 10 years.. Doing medical tests without reason is a russian roulette with your psyche :) I agree in principle though that it would probably be good to have an early "baseline" full body scan and then get incremental checks every year.
petercooper 7y ago
It's not common in the sense that any significant %age of people have it done, but it's not unusual and there are numerous private medical screening facilities that do it for a fee. I had one done two years ago as part of a full body medical and plan to do so every two years or so in order to detect changes over the years (I was willing to take the risk of things being discovered during the first scan).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- spease 7y ago
  What’s the group that does this?
  - petercooper 7y ago
    I did it in the UK via http://www.preventicum.co.uk/ http://www.preventicum.co.uk/
anon1m0us 7y ago
It would be good when trying to determine if there's a build-up of plaque anywhere in a person's arteries and thus at risk of many different cardio-vascular diseases. They use special dyes injected into arteries to facilitate seeing them. Similar things are done for examining the gastrointestinal tract of those who might have cancers somewhere in it. You might also want to see if cancers have metastasized to other parts of the body to determine the extent of the disease.
- spease 7y ago
  Re: that first paragraph, there’s a CT scan procedure that costs a modest amount that checks for plaque buildup principally in your heart. I think it’s “coronary calcium scan”. I was surprised it isn’t more well-known and widely used for screening.
spease 7y ago
No, oftentimes they will intentionality constrain the scan to a specific area that they’re interested in. This limits the time and cost. However there are pretty consistent scan procedures, eg they might order a “sacral MRI” for lower back issues. As others have mentioned, full body MRIs may be used for cancer that they’re concerned may have metastasized. The reluctance of people to do this is that it’s kind of “going fishing”. If they spot something weird, they may wind up having to follow up on it even if it’s probably benign. They don’t want you to come back a few years down the road and hold them responsible for not looking into an ambiguous blotch on an MRI that turned out to be cancerous rather than benign. It’s not really scalable. Someone on here did mention the idea of starting a program of doing full body scans of everybody and then building a database of what things turned out to be an issue to build a better automatic early detection system. It’s an interesting idea. That being said, having an MRI really sucks. You put on ear protection and have to lay still for dozens of minutes or hours while the machine clicks, beeps, clunks, and buzzes at ear-splitting volumes (hence the ear protection). And since an MRI acts as a huge magnet, you can’t take headphones in with you. There was one or two places I went that had non-metallic ear phones, but this seems to be exception rather than the norm. Contrast means getting an injection partway through. And even if you’ve never had problems with claustrophobia, MRIs can still trigger it (there are open MRIs, but these may compromise on resolution). So it’s very understandable that a reasonable amount of effort is made to minimize MRI time.

neonate 7y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20190416075550/http://www.ghat-art.org.uk/mark-1-the-worlds-first-whole-body-mri-scanner/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190416075550/http://www.ghat-a...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 7y ago

MRIs are crazy pieces of technology. I didn't know much about them until I had an MRI myself and went down the rabbit hole reading on the theory of their operation. You're magnetizing hydrogen, then pounding it out of alignment, and then listening for the faint radio signature of atoms moaning as they realign.

datapunk 7y ago
Such a fantastic visual description