3 ms·

That's pretty cool. Did you go to a private company to get your MRI done or was this something that was covered under your insurance and they just happened to l

by icey 17y ago

That's pretty cool. Did you go to a private company to get your MRI done or was this something that was covered under your insurance and they just happened to let you keep the data?

tocomment 17y ago
I'm curious too how you got the data? Did you give you slices like that, and you scanned them?
- wesley 17y ago
  Different guy here, also had an mri done. I simply got a cd-rom with the image slices and a software to view them. There's about 600 images if I can recall correctly.
  - icey 17y ago
    Via insurance or private company? I would really like to do this, but I have no medical reason to do it. I'm just curious about what my insides look like. If anyone knows of a place that will let random joes get an MRI in exchange for money, I'd be interested in hearing about it - as well as how much it costs.
    - Banzai10 17y ago
      You can say that you are feeling very bad headaches, I think it's a good reason and it would be in benefit of science and curiosity
      - icey 17y ago
        And people wonder why health insurance premiums are so bad ;)
    - teej 17y ago
      All you need is a doctor's referral to get an MRI. Go to your doctor and ask nicely, that should be enough. Once you have that, you can shop around to any hospital or clinic that has the right equipment. MRIs can start off at $1,000, so I hope you really want it!
    - sachinag 17y ago
      Please be aware that MRIs have an utterly massive amount of radiation. X-rays are almost always done first because of the risk of damage from the radiation. You really don't want to have an elective MRI. (That said, I'm aware of no known studies that have demonstrated long-term risk from MRI radiation, but to me, prudence says you don't subject yourself to an MRI that you don't have to.)
      - timr 17y ago
        1) It's radio energy, not the ionizing radiation that we associate mutations and cancer. 2) It's actually very low power. Most of the energy in an MRI machine goes toward maintaining a super-high magnetic field. The radio energy used is on the order of a few watts per kg body weight. 3) The danger isn't being irradiated. The danger is being cooked.
      - sokoloff 17y ago
        One of the main reasons to do the X-ray first is to ensure that you don't have any unknown ferrous metal (from welding, grinding, etc) that will become a projectile under the intense magnetic fields. (I wasn't aware that there was a massive amount of radiation from MRIs, and tend to doubt that claim. Are you confusing it with CT perhaps?)
      - aarongough 17y ago
        The 'radiation' involved in an MRI is electro-magnetic radiation, otherwise known as radio waves. It's true that the field strengths involved are thousands of times stronger than what you encounter in everyday life but they are by no means harmful the way that ionizing particle radiation (X-rays, gammra rays, etc) is... The most likely side effect is peripheral nerve stimulation and even that highly unlikely because the field strengths are controlled to avoid it... In general MRIs are perfectly harmless and don't have any serious or lasting side-effects. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging for more info
        sachinag 17y ago
        See, I read that to make sure I wasn't crazy, and I just didn't see the distinction. I want to be clear: you're saying it's totally safe to get an MRI or a full body scan or whatever else as a totally elective procedure?
- pmichaud 17y ago
  When you get a scan like this, they give you all the slices. When I had it done I got them physically, they might just do them digitally now. I even got a 3D model of my skull, it was pretty awesome.
- chasingsparks 17y ago
  I get checkup MR scans every 6 months. I ask for copies for my images on CD. I have never had a place reject but some charge you an out of pocket 10-20$
abstractbill 17y ago
It was covered under my insurance (which means I'll pay an apparently random out-of-pocket amount between 0% and 99% at some later date, judging on previous uses of this insurance). They didn't offer me the data, but I asked, and they gave me a DVD full of scan data. Had to do a little research to figure out how to convert that data to jpeg images, but it wasn't too hard - it turns out imagemagick understands the formats involved, and can do all of the required processing steps.
- wesley 17y ago
  Would you mind sharing the scripts? Would love to have something similar. :-)
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    I didn't save my work unfortunately ;-) I'll have a look when I get home tonight though - there's a decent chance everything is still in my bash history!
  - viraptor 17y ago
    It's was most probably in DICOM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_and_Communications_in_Medicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_and_Communicati...) - pretty much a standard nowadays and you can find a lot of FOSS applications that can read it. Just watch out for the file sizes - those images are not compressed high-resolution 3d 16-or-more-bit grayscale, so you need massive amounts of ram/swap. The format itself is cool though - it can support annotations, arrows and basically anything-you-want overlayed on certain parts of the image afterwards.
teej 17y ago
I'm sure the intricacies vary by state and country, but you typically have a legal right to access your medical records, regardless of who pays and who performs the care. In the US, these rights are granted by HIPAA.

by icey 17y ago

That's pretty cool. Did you go to a private company to get your MRI done or was this something that was covered under your insurance and they just happened to let you keep the data?

tocomment 17y ago

I'm curious too how you got the data? Did you give you slices like that, and you scanned them?

wesley 17y ago
Different guy here, also had an mri done. I simply got a cd-rom with the image slices and a software to view them. There's about 600 images if I can recall correctly.
- icey 17y ago
  Via insurance or private company? I would really like to do this, but I have no medical reason to do it. I'm just curious about what my insides look like. If anyone knows of a place that will let random joes get an MRI in exchange for money, I'd be interested in hearing about it - as well as how much it costs.
  - Banzai10 17y ago
    You can say that you are feeling very bad headaches, I think it's a good reason and it would be in benefit of science and curiosity
    - icey 17y ago
      And people wonder why health insurance premiums are so bad ;)
  - teej 17y ago
    All you need is a doctor's referral to get an MRI. Go to your doctor and ask nicely, that should be enough. Once you have that, you can shop around to any hospital or clinic that has the right equipment. MRIs can start off at $1,000, so I hope you really want it!
  - sachinag 17y ago
    Please be aware that MRIs have an utterly massive amount of radiation. X-rays are almost always done first because of the risk of damage from the radiation. You really don't want to have an elective MRI. (That said, I'm aware of no known studies that have demonstrated long-term risk from MRI radiation, but to me, prudence says you don't subject yourself to an MRI that you don't have to.)
    - timr 17y ago
      1) It's radio energy, not the ionizing radiation that we associate mutations and cancer. 2) It's actually very low power. Most of the energy in an MRI machine goes toward maintaining a super-high magnetic field. The radio energy used is on the order of a few watts per kg body weight. 3) The danger isn't being irradiated. The danger is being cooked.
    - sokoloff 17y ago
      One of the main reasons to do the X-ray first is to ensure that you don't have any unknown ferrous metal (from welding, grinding, etc) that will become a projectile under the intense magnetic fields. (I wasn't aware that there was a massive amount of radiation from MRIs, and tend to doubt that claim. Are you confusing it with CT perhaps?)
    - aarongough 17y ago
      The 'radiation' involved in an MRI is electro-magnetic radiation, otherwise known as radio waves. It's true that the field strengths involved are thousands of times stronger than what you encounter in everyday life but they are by no means harmful the way that ionizing particle radiation (X-rays, gammra rays, etc) is... The most likely side effect is peripheral nerve stimulation and even that highly unlikely because the field strengths are controlled to avoid it... In general MRIs are perfectly harmless and don't have any serious or lasting side-effects. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging for more info
      - sachinag 17y ago
        See, I read that to make sure I wasn't crazy, and I just didn't see the distinction. I want to be clear: you're saying it's totally safe to get an MRI or a full body scan or whatever else as a totally elective procedure?
pmichaud 17y ago
When you get a scan like this, they give you all the slices. When I had it done I got them physically, they might just do them digitally now. I even got a 3D model of my skull, it was pretty awesome.
chasingsparks 17y ago
I get checkup MR scans every 6 months. I ask for copies for my images on CD. I have never had a place reject but some charge you an out of pocket 10-20$

abstractbill 17y ago

It was covered under my insurance (which means I'll pay an apparently random out-of-pocket amount between 0% and 99% at some later date, judging on previous uses of this insurance). They didn't offer me the data, but I asked, and they gave me a DVD full of scan data. Had to do a little research to figure out how to convert that data to jpeg images, but it wasn't too hard - it turns out imagemagick understands the formats involved, and can do all of the required processing steps.

wesley 17y ago
Would you mind sharing the scripts? Would love to have something similar. :-)
- abstractbill 17y ago
  I didn't save my work unfortunately ;-) I'll have a look when I get home tonight though - there's a decent chance everything is still in my bash history!
- viraptor 17y ago
  It's was most probably in DICOM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_and_Communications_in_Medicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_and_Communicati...) - pretty much a standard nowadays and you can find a lot of FOSS applications that can read it. Just watch out for the file sizes - those images are not compressed high-resolution 3d 16-or-more-bit grayscale, so you need massive amounts of ram/swap. The format itself is cool though - it can support annotations, arrows and basically anything-you-want overlayed on certain parts of the image afterwards.

teej 17y ago

I'm sure the intricacies vary by state and country, but you typically have a legal right to access your medical records, regardless of who pays and who performs the care. In the US, these rights are granted by HIPAA.