Everything you need to know about this game-changing innovation.
How much do you know about what’s taking place inside of your own body? Thanks to some major medical breakthroughs in the last few years, the answer to that question can now be: a whole lot more.
Welcome to the future, where it’s currently possible to get fast, accurate, and surprisingly affordable scans of your entire body in less than an hour. These full-body MRI scans have only been around for the last several years, but the incredible stories about their results are piling up, with people sharing tales of life-saving early detection.
In a recent conversation with People, Maria Menounos shared one such story: The former E! News correspondent said she’d started feeling unwell over the summer, but initial testing didn’t reveal anything. Then Menounos underwent a full-body MRI scan, which revealed a 3.9-centimeter mass on her pancreas. It was astonishing: Menounos had stage two pancreatic cancer, and wouldn’t have known about it if not for the scan.
Menounos noted that the early-stage diagnosis she received allowed her to undergo a quick and successful surgery. That early diagnosis was especially critical for pancreatic cancer, which is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, and which usually displays little to no symptoms, until it has advanced to a late stage. Now Menounos is on the mend, and happily awaiting her first child via surrogate with husband Keven Undergaro.
“I need people to know there are places they can go to catch things early,” she told People. “You can’t let fear get in the way. I had that moment where I thought I was a goner — but I’m okay because I caught this early enough.”
Menounos’ story isn’t just inspiring — it’s also medically groundbreaking. The emergence of full-body MRI scans has enabled an unprecedented level of health monitoring for people all over the world. Even better, the tests are becoming faster and cheaper all the time, so that it’s not just possible for celebrities like Menounos to access the highest level of information about their body. It’s possible for everyone.
To learn more about this incredible innovation, Katie Couric Media spoke with Emi Gal, founder and CEO of Ezra, a full-body screening service that recently received FDA clearance for the world’s first 30-minute full-body MRI scan.
Below, Gal explains how these full-body scans work, why they’re so dang fast, and how you can get one yourself… ASAP.
How does a full-body MRI scan work?
A full-body scan works just like a traditional MRI scan. Only now, they’re faster.
“You go into that big, loud MRI machine, and you spend 30 minutes with our new scan in there,” Gal said. “And then three to five business days later, you get a report that tells you whether you have anything of concern in 13 organs across the body.”
Full-body MRI scans can detect early signs of cancer, like in Menounos’s case, but that’s not where the medical benefits end. They also can detect artery blockages, aneurysms, cysts, and more — and with each passing year, these tests are getting faster, smarter, and more affordable.
“We’re adding a mammogram option in about four weeks,” Gal noted. “Skin checks and pap smears are the ones we want to add after that, because that would then give us coverage across the entire body.”
This means that in a few short years, Gal says, you could receive a notification on your phone telling you it’s time for your annual check-up, where you could get nearly all of your health appointments for the year done in one quick afternoon.
How much does a full-body MRI scan cost?
For now, if you want a full–body MRI scan, you’re going to have to pay for it out of pocket, because insurance doesn’t cover it (yet). The cost of these scans depend on which company you choose and which of their products you select.
Ezra, for example, offers three different types of scans: a focused scan on the prostate or lungs ($750), a 30- or 60-minute full body scan ($1,350, $1,950), and a premium full-body scan ($2,350). Each of those options includes payment plans for those who prefer to pay in installments.
For comparison, another full-body scan company, Prenuvo (the one Menounos used), offers a 60-minute full body scan ($2,499), a 20-minute torso scan ($999), and a head and torso scan ($1,799).
It’s worth noting that full-body scans are a new innovation, and as a result, certain companies are only available in specific cities at the moment — so for that reason, your search for the best scan will likely be impacted by location as well as cost.
If these prices seem a bit out of reach to you right now, you can find some comfort in the fact that Gal expects scans to become even more affordable in the very near future.
“Within about two years, we think we’ll be able to launch a 15-minute full-body MRI for $500,” he said. He also noted that as the test becomes more and more affordable, it will be more likely that health insurance companies will choose to include the test in patient coverage.
Spending several thousand dollars can be an intimidating proposition — but when it comes to your health, it’s essential to consider the long term, and how much money you could save down the line by detecting medical issues as early as possible.
“With breast cancer, early cancer detection is significantly cheaper to treat,” Gal says. For both patients and insurance companies alike, Gal explained, there’s a huge incentive for these full-body scans to become widely used.
How artificial intelligence has made full-body MRI scans possible
If you’ve ever had to get an MRI in the past, you probably associate them with expense and inconvenience (and maybe a touch of claustrophobia). So why are they getting so fast and affordable?
The answer is simple: artificial intelligence.
“When you go into an MRI machine, we’re using the magnetic resonance of the protons in the water in the body to create internal images of the body,” Gal says. “Because of that, it’s a very noisy environment.” (In MRI-speak, a “noisy environment” means that the images can be blurry and hard to interpret.)
“To reduce the noise,” Gal went on, “you need to do every scan multiple times, and by doing every scan multiple times, it adds to the time you need to spend in the scanner, right? Well, now we do the scan fewer times than previously, and we use A.I. to remove the noise in those images.”
When it comes to interpreting the data from the MRI, Ezra also uses A.I. to help sort through a database of 5,000 translations that were written manually by a doctor.
“The A.I. then presents a report to a doctor and the doctor has to read it and review it,” Gal said. “There’s all these kinds of A.I. innovations we use to decrease costs, but we always keep doctors in the loop in order to make sure that whatever we put in front of the consumer is accurate.”
It’s also thanks to A.I. that we can expect these tests to become cheaper in the years to come.
“All interpretations will get faster,” Gal predicted. “Our report generation will get faster and more accurate over time. I think there is a future in which some parts of this will be automated fully using artificial intelligence. But it’s a distant future.”
