[moffkalast]

Yeah I'm wondering where exactly people think we'd find the millions of additional MRI machines and technicians to run them to make this somehow viable, as if the current ones are not pretty much at 100% capacity at all times.

[dmurray]

MRI machines cost in the six figures [0], last 10+ years and could reasonably do thousands of full-body scans a year. That's basically free by healthcare standards. Rent for the room to put it in would cost more in most cities.

MRI operators are specially trained technicians, because these are complicated machines. But like, semi trucks and photocopiers are fantastically complicated machines, and we seem to be able to keep a pipeline of people trained to operate and maintain them.

So I don't think there's an economic blocker for giving everyone a full-body MRI scan every year or two.

[0] https://www.blockimaging.com/bid/92623/mri-machine-cost-and-...

[luesterklemme]

What are you reasonably expecting to find in a full body MRI? Besides the notion that a "full body MRI" is not a procedure that is routinely done anyway and lasts upwards of an hour. It's not the scanner that is the limiting economic factor.

[dmurray]

Right. I'm replying to the commentator who questioned how we could possibly purchase and staff enough MRI machines to give people regular full body scans.

I'm saying there's no question that would be economically viable. The reason we don't and shouldn't do it is that it wouldn't be medically valuable, even compared to other cheap interventions.

[ben_w]

The website is calling for their full-body MRI-replacing ultrasonic scanners to be so cheap they're part of a spa session.

TBH, this is already a red flag for me, like so many other "tech bro invents X" stories, though I am also aware of stories were "company realises Y is overpriced in medical purchases, makes Y cheaper, finds all hospitals think it is a scam and refuse to buy unless they raise prices".

[zarzavat]

Conventional ultrasound scanners are already cheap. Why can't a big ultrasound scanner be cheap too?

What makes MRI machines expensive is that they are big helium-cooled superconducting magnets that have to be continuously kept at a few Kelvin.

[ben_w]

As others are saying in these comments, MRI machines themselves aren't particularly expensive machines on a per-scan basis, to the extent the machines themselves are often left underutilised.

But even if you disregard that, there's this:

  It starts by stepping into a shallow pool of golden light. You then begin to descend into the water. Your body passes through a ring of underwater sensors, each acting like a dolphin, using its echolocation. The sensors send ultrasonic sound waves through your body from every angle. With enough waves, and enough angles, we form an image of what's happening inside your body.

  The goal is for this process to take no more than 60 seconds.

  You go into the water, you come out of the water, and you're done.

Other than the structure reading like an AI wrote it, the content also reads like someone who believes in homeopathy and invested in Juicero wrote it. Or hyperloop, where a believer could say paraphrase you and say "Conventional [trains] are already cheap. Why can't a [fast train in a vacuum tube] be cheap too?".

Note this does not mean I think the hardware proposed here is totally impossible*. Sure you could make an ultrasound scanner. Why not? But then, hyperloop was always physically possible, just never turned out to be a good idea to actually build**.

* That said, I am suspicious about the claim in the video "Each sensor resolves motions smaller than the width of an atom - not micrometers or nanometers but picometers!", which does sound impossible to me given the movement of atoms is the sense field itself, albeit I'm not an expert in this domain and may just be wrong like how there's weird tricks for photolithography smaller than the wavelength of light used.

** Back when hyperloop was taken seriously and I was still looking for genius behind things Musk said, I thought hyperloop was an excuse to develop here on Earth a transport system that for a Mars colony made more sense than cars and roads (and indeed I still think that, just there's no evidence Musk ever did).