Re: extremely off topic-Xrays

From: Gumprint@aol.com
Subject: Re: extremely off topic-Xrays
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:27:16 -0500 (EST)

> Where I live (greater Metro D.C.) the XRays are the property of the
> physician who orders it, despite it being of you.

I don't know about difference across states, etc. but this is partly
the policy of the doctor, the hospital and the imaging center. My
neurologist likes to send patients to an imaging center where the
doctor could order duplicate films, and she also said some other
imaging centers don't do that. But actually there's a way to get this
all doen for free.

But if you want to get your MRI scans of brain and skull, go find a
newspaper, subway advertisement, free paper classified, craigslist,
whatever and find all sorts of brain imaging studies. The best is to
find a PhD student in neuroscience, psychology, whatever related
field. They like to have you sit in the machine while you hear
strange sounds or you count something or something simple, and they
like to pay you some small amount of cash. Details vary from study to
study but you contribute to scientific knowledge that may find some
use for human health decades later, you get money to buy a brick of
film, and if asked nicely, they'll probably burn a CD-ROM of TIFF
images. Do a bit of search on the web and think how you want your
brain to be sliced. Transverse, parasagittal, coronal are standard but
they tend to slice on a non-standard plane that includes all brain
structures of their interest. Those studies are also subject to
privacy regulations but you sign on the informed consent form and they
shouldn't be too uptight about it, especially if you promise to send a
few of your friends for the study. Anatomical studies are probably the
best because they should be getting high res scans... but dont
complain me or them if you don't get the kind of slices you want -
they may not gather the picture you want. (Some studies actually
advertise the TIFF image in CD-ROM as a part of the compensation!)

If you like true x-ray, you probably need some clinically legitimate
reason and a doctor who doesn't mind extra trouble. Scientific studies
use mostly MRI, because it uses no radiation or radioactive material
and allows more functional investigation... making PET, CT,
etc. rather obsolete. But you can get MRI scans that look similar to
x-ray if you ask for the image "weighted" that way.

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"Reality has always had too many heads." (Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound, 1997)