| ▲ | unholiness 8 hours ago |
| So, on the one hand, this is interesting! Reducing radiation from CT scans is a noble cause on its own. If on top of that it could make tomography cheaper and easier, you could imagine getting earlier detection of aneurisms, fibrosis, cirrhosis, thrombosis, stenosis, even plausibly cancerous masses (along with plenty of over-detection). On the other hand, nothing here substantiates this promise. We've got a video render of what a hypothetical device could look like. It's probably more than nothing (they got exclusive license on these butterfly chips in 2025, and it's at least plausible that the best solution to the data bottleneck in an absurdly noisy system like this is real-time AI image processing)... But it's certainly less than something. It's a hype video that doesn't prove feasibility of anything, yet. EDIT: This is all in reaction to the second video on the announcement post[0], which is much more informative than anything on the page currently linked. [0]https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost |
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| ▲ | z7 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| "I just tested my hand in a mini version of this scanner. Images that are higher quality than MRI, whole body captured in <1 minute, virtually free to run. This is going to change medicine." https://x.com/SebastianCaliri/status/2067452733356122303 |
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| ▲ | Aromasin an hour ago | parent [-] | | I help engineers design traditional scanners (Philips, GE, Siemens, etc). To be frank, this statement stinks like utter pig shit. Some PE bro preaching miracles about a technology that I am sure they are in some way invested in making profit from does not convince me of it's legitimacy. My base instincts, from the unfortunate experience of working daily with PE bros, tell me the opposite in fact. It gives déjà vu of the Theranos hysteria. | | |
| ▲ | femto an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | As someone in the medical imaging field, are you aware of anyone working on passive sonar for medical imaging? I'm curious, as it's something that I've always thought would be fun to work on. | |
| ▲ | Pay08 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | What does PE mean? | | |
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| ▲ | justaguyonline 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| AI hype aside, this is one of those projects I'd like to know the open source stack of and the academic research behind. It's actually overlaps with an idea that started circling around in my head back when (deep) neural networks were the new hype cycle. What's the relation between sensor density and resolution? If their array could give femtometer resolution, how much could you drop the density when you only needed to detect forearm muscle movements through the skim. The way Ctl-labs was trying achieve the same results always seemed like it had fundamental physical limitations due to the nature of electromyography (to this software engineer...) |
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| ▲ | A_D_E_P_T an hour ago | parent [-] | | > femtometer resolution The diameter of a carbon atom is 154 picometers. Nobody's going down into the femtos. And you're not going to get atomic resolution, either, because humans move around too much and things like scanning electron microscopes need very stationary samples. Even microscopic vibrations can blur the final image. Which isn't to say that you couldn't get very good resolution... | | |
| ▲ | davrosthedalek an hour ago | parent [-] | | Just for illustration: Gravitational wave detection is on the femtometer scale. The proton is about that size. We can measure these things, but the machines are, let's say, "big". |
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| ▲ | cornstalks 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Reducing radiation from CT scans is a noble cause on its own Is it? Linear No Threshold has largely been rejected at this point. https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/early/2024/06/21/jnumed.... |
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| ▲ | adastra22 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We have no evidence in favor of the linear no threshold model. That is not the same as saying that we have evidence against it. | | |
| ▲ | haldujai 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is some evidence for hormesis - but yes no model is proven right now. LNT is the most conservative model and part of why it sticks around. A good primer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2477686/ | | |
| ▲ | looofooo0 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | LNT does also damage, as people refusing necessary CT scans or countries switching of nuclear power because of fear. |
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| ▲ | arcticbull 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure but we don’t prove negatives for a reason - it’s impossible. We assume the null hypothesis. | | |
| ▲ | unholiness 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | LNT is the null hypothesis. No one disagrees a linear model fits the data very well in high doses. If you want to argue that model doesn't work in low doses, you need a model with more parameters and sufficient data to fit it. The issue is that, at these low doses we want to differentiate, we're also looking at effect sizes that are hard to separate from noise, and sampling biases that are hard to erase. There's still lively and ongoing debate. | | |
| ▲ | looofooo0 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well problem is that humans are so noisy through lifestyle, enviroment and genes that any proof for either is really hard. |
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| ▲ | dooglius 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your link does not support, and in fact refutes, your claim |
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| ▲ | kibibu 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm not putting my head under. How do we know this won't cause aneurysms? Damage eyes and ears? Getting a medical device approved takes time because of concerns like this. |
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| ▲ | autoexec 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It might not actually cause harm or strange effects to people's bodies, but I'd certainly feel better if it was tested and used by doctors in a hospital and not some "spa" since those tend to be poorly regulated and where all kinds of quackery takes place (https://www.aafp.org/afp/afp-community-blog/med-spa-industry...). The safety of the device itself is a concern, but so is the trustworthiness of the output. Midjourney already has some very questionable history with medical imagery (like this totally legit image of rat testicles published in "Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/AI_gener...) | | |
| ▲ | Levitz 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >Midjourney already has some very questionable history with medical imagery (like this totally legit image of rat testicles published in "Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/AI_gener...) I don't think "someone used their tool to produce a silly result and used it" qualifies as Midjourney having questionable history at all. | |
| ▲ | ElFitz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The safety of the device itself is a concern, but so is the trustworthiness of the output. And the safety of the data as well.
Am I supposed to entrust full body scans to a startup? |
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| ▲ | zythyx 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | From my understanding of the post, the waves that are created are smaller than light waves, and there's no evidence that light waves, sound waves or sub-sonic waves have any aneurysm-causing effects. (I researched more and found in the video a value)
The waves are 50 nanometres, and this is basically the equivalent of having a full body ultrasound. We've been doing baby ultrasounds for decades with no ill effects, so I can't imagine this being different | |
| ▲ | mNovak 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We already ultrasound babies in the womb, so one would hope this has been studied. | | |
| ▲ | reverius42 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Before ultrasound, they used to x-ray pregnant women to see the fetus. At that time, someone might have said "one would hope this has been studied"... unfortunately that practice went on for about 60 years before being stopped in the late 1950s. Side note: kinda crazy they had medical x-rays in the 1890s. X-Ray imaging was discovered in 1985 and used clinically within 2 years. But I do agree with your point, these days, I hope we're better about studying the potential dangers of current technologies we use. | | |
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| ▲ | carlosdp 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| that's not a video render of a hypothetical device, that's a real video of the real working device, fwiw |
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| ▲ | mrandish 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > the real working device Could you expand on the term "working"? Do you mean like "working to slowly lower a person into water while videos of animated Figma UIs play back on a monitor?" Or do you mean some crazy kind of "working", like "the ring of devices we see are scanning the organs of the woman we see and the images appearing on the monitor are those just-captured organ scans?" | |
| ▲ | datadrivenangel 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's just a render? Where's the video? | | |
| ▲ | roarcher 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The first video appears to be real. Who knows if it's a working prototype or just a mockup, but the fact that it's held together by C-clamps and other stuff you could get at Home Depot makes me lean towards the former. If it was purely for marketing they'd probably make it look more polished. | | |
| ▲ | moffkalast 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The first video appears to be real The video is clearly from Midjourney /s |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The first video has the actual device (whether it's functioning or not) and the second video is a render. |
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| ▲ | camillomiller 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This reeks of peak bubble, it’s ok say that. |