High-Tech Scans Of Fruits And Vegetables?
Medical Pastiche blogger Peter Zavislak, whom I can always count on to point out the unusual and interesting sides of medicine, sent me to a website that has nothing but pictures and videos of food in an MRI scanner.
Here’s a series of images from their site of a cantaloupe as viewed from an MRI:
I just find myself thinking that these MRI machines aren’t cheap to run and maintain. Doctors and nurses used to be able to get “freebies” by buddying up with the X-ray, CT or MRI technologist and running a scan for free.
Some hospitals allow their employees to test the machines after being set up or maintained to get images for testing purposes. I’m sure more than a technologist or radiologist or two have found incidentalomas from this practice.
Most hospitals, as a matter of policy, do not allow random doctors or nurses to hit up the radiology department for a free scan if they have a concern, although I’m sure a lot of that stuff still happens off the clock. Though I’m sure most technologists would not want to lose their job if they got caught doing it.
But fruits and vegetables? Makes me wonder who’s running these scans and where they have the time to do them. Perhaps these are sanctioned scans at a research facility. Or maybe a rich artist paid a local hospital for the right to borrow their MRI technology to generate these cool images.
Or maybe it’s a rouge MRI technologist sneaking fruits and veggies into the scanner while nobody is looking.
If you’re a radiologist, what would your report on this MRI of a cantaloupe look like?
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
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