[wincy]

The MRI didn’t feel like anything. It wasn’t until the neurologist showed me images of my brain with my eyeballs right there in the front that I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. I have no idea how regular people just laugh off stuff like that. Awful existential crisis level dread seeing my mental meat.

[13of40]

For anyone wanting to relive that experience, you should know that (in the US at least) you can go to the imaging department at the hospital and get all of that data on a CD, and there's some good free software to render it. I've got a 3D print of my head somewhere that I made from a CT scan.

[ttoinou]

Noo way? My CD only contains a bunch of jpeg from the slices. What file format did you get ?

[celdon25]

> some good free software to render it

Not going to share the name of it? :)

[echo_time]

If the images are in DICOM format, which is common, then dcm2niix should be able to convert them https://github.com/rordenlab/dcm2niix

I think it can handle a few other formats as well. Once they are .nii(.gz) files, then mricrogl (https://www.nitrc.org/projects/mricrogl) should be able to render it - of course, for a brain scan - this would be your whole head. Brain extraction is performed by more specialized software, but that would get you started.

[Workaccount2]

I did this and then realized I have no way of using a CD.

[sundarurfriend]

You can buy portable CD reader/writers for pretty cheap (that connect to a USB port).

[13of40]

When I did it, I got the guy in the office next to me to put his DVD drive on a file share so I could copy to modern media. That was probably at least four years ago, so not sure if I could do the same now.

[wewtyflakes]

I had a similar feeling when the doctor showed the MRI images going progressively deeper into my brain. It was truly bizarre and made me squirm in discomfort. I hadn't expected to feel that way.

[anodyne33]

Former epileptic, I've had dozens of MRs and CTs. It's rote for me to see and I never had a visceral reaction and in fact I find it pretty fascinating. The one that I do have that's a standout and quite shocking is my first post-lobeectomy MRI. There's a very noticeable void where my right temporal lobe (+amygdala, cerebellum and hippocampus) were resected. Great conversation starter.

[codethief]

Good to hear you're no longer suffering from epilepsy!

Have you noticed any other changes due to your lobectomy? (Isn't the amygdala responsible for fear, among other things?)

[rcme]

I got an MRI of my knee after my injury. It didn't seem significant in any way. The ultrasound of my pregnant wife was way crazier to me.

[macintux]

I haven’t had either, but my knee is far more disposable/replaceable/independent of my self-identity.