Proponents claim Midjourney's low-cost whole-body scanner overcomes diagnostic limits, but critics argue hardware upgrades cannot solve clinical failures

You'll see a lot of doctors come out "against" this kind of broad screening system. They can even get quite agitated about it. This resistance stems from a well-established clinical consensus: traditional population-level imaging fails to improve health outcomes because false positives and invasive follow-ups do more harm than good. But this view suffers from an obvious blind spot. Existing studies rely on static data and completely ignore time-series imaging. And time-series is ignored because we haven't been able to afford to do high frequency imaging at population scale. Clearly, time series is going to be immensely more valuable than a single image. If you drop costs, value can go from 0 -> 1. On a more fundamental level, the argument against screening rests on an obviously false precept "More information is bad" -- just clearly untrue. More information better, you just have to interpret it correctly.

You'll see a lot of doctors come out "against" this kind of broad screening system. They can even get quite agitated about it. This resistance stems from a well-established clinical consensus: traditional population-level imaging fails to improve health outcomes because false positives and invasive follow-ups do more harm than good. But this view suffers from an obvious blind spot. Existing studies rely on static data and completely ignore time-series imaging. And time-series is ignored because we haven't been able to afford to do high frequency imaging at population scale. Clearly, time series is going to be immensely more valuable than a single image. If you drop costs, value can go from 0 -> 1. On a more fundamental level, the argument against screening rests on an obviously false precept "More information is bad" -- just clearly untrue. More information better, you just have to interpret it correctly.

You'll see a lot of doctors come out "against" this kind of broad screening system. They can even get quite agitated about it. This resistance stems from a well-established clinical consensus: traditional population-level imaging fails to improve health outcomes because false positives and invasive follow-ups do more harm than good. But this view suffers from an obvious blind spot. Existing studies rely on static data and completely ignore time-series imaging. And time-series is ignored because we haven't been able to afford to do high frequency imaging at population scale. Clearly, time series is going to be immensely more valuable than a single image. If you drop costs, value can go from 0 -> 1. On a more fundamental level, the argument against screening rests on an obviously false precept "More information is bad" -- just clearly untrue. More information better, you just have to interpret it correctly.

It’s revealing to see so many medical imaging experts being dismissive towards Midjourney (although of course they all preface their dismissive comments by saying that they aren’t doing that… but no one is fooled), calling them naive, and giving all the reasons why it won’t work and won’t change anything.

It sort of helps to explain why imaging is so insanely overpriced and rare in elective, prophylactic, discretionary contexts.

Some of the arguments are so absurd. “Oh, water was used in the 50s, we walked away from that. That’s going backwards.”

Really? They had sub-millimeter resolution back then, too? Oh. So maybe that’s totally irrelevant.

It can’t see through bones? So take images from all around the bone. Sure, you won’t be able to see inside the bones, but you don’t need to for it to still be very useful.

The criticisms all seem to make a common analytical mistake that I used to see all the time in the hedge fund business, which is ignoring key aspects of a disruptive change when applying an argument.

If the cost of the scan is 99.9% lower, and it takes a minute instead of an hour, and there is no risk from radiation, then you can realistically do LOTS of scans much more frequently.

That means you have a whole new modality to work with: time. You can look at changes over time. Duh. That’s a really big difference!

This one aspect of the innovation dramatically changes the calculus, and suddenly most of the “fatal flaws” identified by the experts melt away into obvious irrelevance.

Also, some of the flaws they identify have obvious next steps that could address them, like adding additional modalities (like light) to help differentiate tissue types.

Anyway, it’s all a bit maddening to see this tripe, and also seeing all the people gleefully reposting and echoing it as if it’s some kind of “gotcha.”

In 5 years, it will all seem as laughable as the video of that European space executive dismissing SpaceX and reusable rockets as a pipe dream 8 years ago.

One of the great things about the free market system is that smart people like @DavidSHolz can just do this stuff and the old guard can’t stop them.

Under a Soviet central-planning system, David would be dismissed as an ignorant dilettante with dangerous, naive, wrong ideas.

He would be laughed out of the room, kind of like how the Russians laughed at Musk when he tried to buy some of their rockets before deciding to build his own.