5 ms·
That's an insane amount of radiation, and would substantially increase your risk of fatal cancer. A single CT scan is roughly a years worth of normal radiation
by 3am 12y ago
That's an insane amount of radiation, and would substantially increase your risk of fatal cancer. A single CT scan is roughly a years worth of normal radiation exposure, and then targeted to a single area of the body.
- mcphage 12y agoRight, I wouldn't want to do it with CT scans. But I think it's an area where a less dangerous, cheaper scanning method might save a lot of lives, even with our current techniques for treating cancer. Frequent scanning would mean people would find tumors when they're smaller, and only treat the ones which behave dangerously.
- 3am 12y agoedit: I'm replacing my entire previous comment about the superiority of ct/pet-ct vs *mri scanning; it looks like some groups are doing work with MRIs that are comparable in accuracy and nearing clinical use. I still think daily whole body scans are a spectacular waste of human capital for relatively little benefit.
- mcphage 12y ago> I still think daily whole body scans are a spectacular waste of human capital for relatively little benefit. I agree, and I'm not recommending we do that right now. But imagine if we had cheap, fast ways to do the scans. So much money is being pumped into cancer treatment right now, I'm just wondering if better cancer detection might be more beneficial. Our current treatment methods might get us a lot farther because we'd use them when the tumors are smaller, and we'd have a much better sense of how aggressive a tumor is.