The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera web browser

I'm looking forward to the day when we'll have routine body scans. If you're exposed to a lot of science fiction, as I am, you've probably seen what I'm referring to: some sort of bed where you lie down and you get scanned. The doctors know immediately if there's anything wrong with you. It's simple, painless, and just a regular part of medical care. Nowadays, it seems like so much can be lurking within you without showing any outward symptoms. If we could all go to the doctor and get a body scan every six months or so, we'd find problems sooner (at a more treatable stage) and get more accurate diagnoses.

Sure, there are a some scanning technologies today, such as MRI or CT, but they're much more limited than I have in mind. I've had two MRIs: one on my jaw and one on my wrist. In both cases, I had to stay very still for several minutes while a specific area was targeted. MRIs only show slices of certain parts of our bodies, so I imagine a full body MRI would take hours. Not fun. CT, also known as CAT scans, uses x-rays, so I imagine any large-scale and regular scanning would have adverse effects.

I actually found my first MRI quite relaxing. If you haven't had an MRI, there's a lot of noise involved. The noise is something like the sound of wood blocks being knocked together continuously. For whatever reason, I found the noise very soothing and I almost fell asleep. The MRI on my wrist might have been equally relaxing, but I was in an uncomfortable position.

In any case, I hope we'll see such technology in my life time. That, and teleporters.