A New Medical Instrument

A new British medical instrument is about to change dramatically our ability to recognize disease hidden inside the body. It is called the magnetic scanner, and it gives information about the body which current machines, such as the brain scanner and the more recent body scanner, cannot provide. And unlike existing machines the new machine does not use X-ray radiation waves, which makes it much safer for patients.

Unlike existing scanners, a magnetic scanner can show the side or the back of a suspect part of the body. Used on, for example, a lung with suspected damage, it can turn the image of the lung to give a series of different views. The image is not simply worked out in the computer's "imagination": the magnetic scanner actually examines every side of the lung.

When examining the softer part of the body with existing scanners, doctors frequently have to use a "contrast medium" to make a muscular organ show up to X-ray waves. The usual "contrast medium" given to a patient before a stomach X-ray scan takes place is harmless, but for some brain-scans a "contrast medium" has to be given in an injection so that it passes into the brain. This is unpleasant and painful and it can be dangerous. The magnetic scanner needs no "contrast medium".

The new machine can also see parts of the body in greater detail than ever before. Growths of all kinds show up clearly on the brain and so do the dead patches which are the signs of the disease multiple sclerosis Until now patients complaining of double vision or an inability to control their muscles from time to time could be suffering from multiple sclerosis or, equally, from some much more easily cured diseases and a brain scanner could not distinguish between these with certainty. The doctor can now definitely say whether or not cancer or multiple sclerosis is present. Previously, these diseases have been missed and patients have been given false information about their health. The technique is still improving with great speed: pictures produced a couple of years ago look very simple compared with those of today.