Full-Body AI Scans Could Be the Future of Preventive Medicine - CNET

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Full-Body AI Scans Could Be the Future of Preventive Medicine - CNET

When I told my doctor I had an opportunity to get a full body MRI for work, he told me not to do it.  He cited the general medical community's opinion that, for most adults, the benefits of full body scans won't outweigh the risks of chasing down a (likely benign) finding with invasive follow-up procedures. Because while there's a slim chance the scan will lead to an early diagnosis of a serious health condition or cancer, the likelihood it'll find something a little off in your body is all but guaranteed. If they were a good idea, he said, doctors would be recommending them to all of their patients who could afford to get one. (Prices for a full-body scan, which look for tumors and other abnormalities in all the major bodily systems, range from $1,350 to $2,500.)  Like any reporter who does things for the plot, I ignored the advice of the professional and got the scan anyway. Because right now, people who can afford it are going in for full-body MRIs at places like Prenuvo, where I went in New York right before Prenuvo officially opened its eighth branch in the US this spring. Ezra, another private company offering full-body scans, announced last month that its newest scan called the "full body flash" is now available, which uses artificial intelligence cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to clean up MRI images. Dr. Daniel Sodickson, head radiologist with Ezra and chief of innovation in radiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said that Ezra's AI is used to clean up images similar to how you'd "wipe clean the shower door." "Wipe away the fog," Sodickson said of how the technology assists radiologists. "Basically, remove any obscuring haze so we can see crisply and clearly."   Watch this: How to Clone Your Own Voice with AI 05:38 With or without AI, full-body scans for otherwise healthy adults challenge guidance from traditional medical groups, which rely on bodies of research and careful "risk versus benefits" calculations before they send out recommendations to the masses. Prenuvo and Ezra say they can catch early-stage cancer and other health conditions that often lurk for years before being caught in a doctor's office. But at a population level, the less common heroic story of something sinister being discovered, like pancreatic cancer, doesn't make up for the laundry list of follow-up tests and potential side effects that full-body scans may lead to. At least, that's how the current thinking by medical organizations goes.  "There is no documented evidence that total body screening is cost-efficient or effective in prolonging life," the American College of Radiology, a medical society that makes recommendations for physicians using imaging tests, said in a statement. Though it will continue to monitor new science, the college does not currently support the use of full-body screenings for patients without "clinical symptoms, risk factors or a family history suggesting underlying disease or serious injury." On the other hand, the companies running full body scans, with plans to increase the use of AI in order to maximize results, have the potential to serve a revolutionary shift in medical technology, especially for the four in 10 people who will develop cancer in their lifetime. If these scans can reach the whole population -- not just the select few who can afford one -- and come with a standardized way for doctors to interpret results, full-body MRIs may have the potential to transform primary care and make late-stage diagnoses a preventable tragedy. Prenuvo The Prenuvo scan  Prenuvo is a full-body MRI scan -- it stands for magnetic resonance imaging -- which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to look at every bodily system and virtually all of your organs from head to toe. MRIs have traditionally been considered the "gold standard" for looking at soft tissue, the brain and spinal cord and diagnosing health conditions like aneurysms, strokes, spinal cord disorders, brain injuries and more. Compared to CT scans and X-rays, which use very small doses of ionizing radiation to capture images inside the body, MRIs don't use any radiation and therefore don't present the (very small) risk of repeated radiation exposure in a medical setting. Prenuvo advertises the ability of its whole-body MRI to detect over 500 different...