[carbocation]

This sort of technology offers a lot of value for understanding human health in the future.

Right now, we (physicians) discourage people from getting tested outside of guidelines because we don't know what to do with incidental findings. But you could imagine that as a society, we would like to detect and understand these things, rather than just remain ignorant to them.

Inexpensive technology like this could be perfect for performing large-scale studies with repeated sampling of volunteers over time, to gain information that can help the next generation.

[robwwilliams]

And perfect for very high false discovery rates and unnecessary downstream diagnostic burden and iatrogenic errors. Rather see a focus on new magnet technologies to reduce cost without loss if already marginal clinical MRI resolution.

[sfink]

> And perfect for very high false discovery rates and unnecessary downstream diagnostic burden and iatrogenic errors.

...which is exactly why the comment you're replying to says that physicians discourage them. That's missing the point; noisier devices are indeed not going to be great at improving the existing applications. But there's a whole world of other possibilities out there as long you don't try to substitute questionable data for good. Like monitoring over time, or between-patients studies where you get additional significance from large numbers, or even just fishing expeditions where you see what the cheaper and more deployable stuff is capable of. Not everything needs the best and only the best.

> Rather see a focus on new magnet technologies to reduce cost without loss if already marginal clinical MRI resolution.

Why not both? The work required is going to be pretty different.

And chaining them together is a time-honored technique: use the quick cheap thing to detect reasons to dig in with the fancy stuff. Your base rate may be low, but if the quick check is negative then the adjusted probability might drop it below some other cause that you'd be better off looking into.

Data is good, just don't fuck it up.