radiologist here - example images don't look great

Instead of the value of evaluating a single scan, what about determinations made from evaluating regular deltas between images?

As a layperson, I'm mostly familiar with the concept of "get scanned, and a professional evaluates it"... are there scenarios where the approach of "imaging every few weeks, to make decisions based on trends" is currently done?

(From reading other comment threads here, I suspect the general answer is: other body-scanning startups have proposed the same thing, and it hasn't made sense)

As an aside, I could probably benefit from allergy shots, but the idea of having a regularly scheduled errand to do during the workweek is pretty unappealing, so I never seriously consider it.

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jawns 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm scratching my head about why they would venture into an entirely different field like this, one with tremendous regulatory hurdles, if they know (and surely they must know) that radiologists are going to pan the results.

It's like if LeBron announced he was switching to bowling and was going to revolutionize the sport, then rolled a gutter ball.

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oliyoung 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I'm scratching my head about why they would venture into an entirely different field like this

Never underestimate the audacity of a software engineer with a new toy

> It's like if LeBron announced he was switching to bowling and was going to revolutionize the sport, then rolled a gutter ball.

Well, if you replace LeBron with Jordan, and Bowling with Baseball ..

	▲	amirhirsch 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The founder of midjourney is not a software engineer.

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themantalope 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not sure. Image reconstruction/generation is a computationally intensive process, and in recent years DL based methods for improve image reconstruction have advanced fields like musculoskeletal MRI imaging. The physics behind this idea are interesting, but will have to wait to see if they produce images with high anatomic detail.

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mrwaffle 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm pretty sure, like most things, it's better to wait and see what's built rather than take issue with their short marketing video.

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bandrami 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, Michael Jordan did play for the White Sox for a hot second

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dyauspitr 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s because no one has heard from mid journey in a few years so they’re pivoting

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vunderba 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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swyx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

can you say more? dont look great compared to current radiology, sure, but you see no potential in ultrasound diagnosis whatsoever? would it improving 10% change your mind? 10x? what's a good way to think about what "looks good" looks like?

	▲	davidivadavid 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's basically the only thing I'm interested in reading about this. Based on my complete lack of radiology knowledge, I'd say the images look... a bit blurry or something? So, what would be an example of something this would not allow a radiologist/doctor to see? Without those kinds of details, radiologists just expose themselves to: oh so you're telling me this doesn't work as well as the machines you paid ~millions of dollars for and are currently charging your clients a lot to use? Mmm I wonder why.

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bhouston 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But isn’t this much cheaper and easier so even if they are not quite a good, the accessibility and ease and thus much more data is better?

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rflrob 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

More data sounds better, but especially in a medical context, you have to be careful, because false positives have consequences. The PSA test is no longer broadly recommended for prostate cancer screening [1]. What harm could it do, you know more about your body, even if it's a noisy predictor? Most prostate cancer is slow growing, and something that men "die with" rather than "die of", so treatment can make for worse outcomes, without clear benefit.

It's not clear that we have the health infrastructure in place to know what to do with frequent, low resolution, whole body scans of the human body. How often do anomalies show up and then go away? How often are anomalies purely a scanning/data processing artifact? Who reads the scans and makes recommendations about follow-ups, if any? I think this is the kind of thing that sounds exciting and with low direct risk, but with all kinds of questions that are not only unanswered, but apparently unconsidered.

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/types/prostate/psa-fact-sheet

	▲	runako 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> It's not clear that we have the health infrastructure in place to know what to do with frequent, low resolution, whole body scans of the human body. This is exactly my thinking. There are decades of longitudinal studies behind the recommendations physicians make based on given levels of e.g. cholesterol in a standard blood test. And critically, those depend on standard protocols around administering and testing samples. This would be brand new and would not have any of that infrastructure. Which all tech starts at, good. But I would expect Midjourney to need to dig in for a few decades to get and analyze clinical results and outcomes. For body scans, I think about how few people would know if they have e.g. three kidneys (or other distortion), and how that impacts/doesn't impact their health. Most people do not undergo autopsy after death, so it's possible there are correlates between good/bad health outcomes that frequent scanning would eventually reveal. But it would take significant time for this to be apparent.
	▲	totetsu 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes. I spent a bunch of money on many of the optional extra imagining scans on my last health check up only to realize this afterwards. Humans have survived this far without this data. It would be better to spend resources on preventative things or lifestyle things known to promote health, than to obsess over seeing whats going on inside.

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themantalope 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Other than the shapes of the tissues in the images, there is no anatomic detail. Wouldn't be useful for diagnostics. It's substantially worse than conventional ultrasound.

	▲	throwaway219450 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Would it be suitable for basic body composition (as they claim in TFA)? DEXA is a big business and companies push a subscription model where they encourage you to get monthly scans. The results are really fun to look at and the dose is admittedly very low, but you're still getting rastered by an x-ray. It would also explain the spa angle and hence why they're doing that before going for regulation. > We’re starting by just giving you detailed body composition maps — and we’ll be submitting regular test results to the FDA for increased capabilities. As far as I understand ultrasound there's no reason you couldn't do this, it's just infeasible to do a full body scan with a hand probe and you get covered in goop. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3770049/

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ranger_danger 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Besides the high probably that those images are fake, and probably this entire device is fake... if it were real then it would mean what they're showing in those images is not even close to an approximation of what the actual data could show you if they put more effort into volume rendering of 3D data (not unlike Voreen).

The resolution of typical DICOM images is much less than what they're saying they are actually capturing, so the reconstructed images they're showing are just terrible for no good reason.

But I suspect there is a bigger fundamental physics issue with this entire thing... I'm not convinced they can penetrate fully inside and all the way around a human with only non-ionizing energy, especially from that far away.

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8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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