/Tech5h ago

Brian Roemmele and Danielle Fong argue low-cost body imaging shifts diagnostics from isolated biopsies to continuous physiological tracking

Continuous non-invasive scans could reduce the need for biopsies.

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#756

Original post

Brian Roemmele@BrianRoemmele#1861inTech

Bravo. This is how it is done.

We need to be wrong in our old ways to be right in the new ways.

Midjourney is changing heath and it is a massive win for all of us and the others who are working in garages.

Matthew Zirwas, MD@MattZirwas

I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner.

Well, maybe not wrong, but at a minimum I missed something obvious because I was thinking like a doctor who's been practicing for 25 years.

And I didn't explain my point well.

First, where I was wrong:

All historical precendent that showed that widespread screening imaging is net neutral or harmful was imaging that was expensive, inconvenient, gated by physicians and couldn't practically be repeated frequently short term.

If the Midjourney ultrasound is high resolution, harmless, inexpensive and convenient, people can get an initial scan, then if there are abnormalities concerning for cancer, they can get weekly follow up scans to see if it's growing/changing, and if it's not, they can leave it alone.

In retrospect, that is obvious but it never occurred to me.

Now, you'd assume that that approach would have to lead to it being useful and saving lives, and it probably will. But we won't really know it does until we have a couple years of data. Lots of things that seem obvious in medicine end up being wrong once we collect data.

Second, what I didn't explain well:

It's not that I think non-doctors are 'too dumb' to use the results effectively.

Its that historically it was literally impossible to use the results effectively, and that is super, super counterintuitive. It seems obvious that finding stuff early is beneficial, but experience has shown that it isn't.

Here's why:

The vast majority of abnormalities (i.e. possible cancer) isn't cancer - like over 90% of them, ends up being harmless - something thay your body could have handled on it's own.

But the only way to find out was to have invasive, risky procedures to biopsy or remove what was found.

And overall, the side effects from all the risky, invasive procedures to track down the over 90% of stuff that was harmless equal or outweigh the benefit from removing the less than 10% of stuff that wasn't harmless.

If the MIdjourney device can be repeated frequently, like weekly, at a low cost and is harmless, it could negate the need for the risky, invasive procedures.

Not saying it will, but it seems like it could and I confidently posted yesterday that it was a bad idea.

I was wrong to confidently post that.

5:53 PM · Jun 21, 2026 · 10.4K Views

Sentiment

Positive users praise the Midjourney ultrasound concept for enabling less unpleasant cancer scans than MRIs or PETs, while negative users accuse promoters of hidden financial motives or chasing impressions.

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6 comments with sentiment.

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VIEWS1.4KLIKES9

Dave Troy@davetroy

@chr1sa Peeve: democratized means “ruled by the people.” You’re describing a new, accessible technology created by one company and which will become widely distributed. Widely distributed != “ruled by the people.”

19h1.4K9

RETWEETS2

Chris Anderson@chr1sa

What's most interesting is that he explains why he was wrong: he had not internalized the implications of body imaging becoming cheap, easy and reliable. Rather than one-off datapoints that are more worrying than useful, they can be constant measures of body change.

When something is democratized, it becomes different. Scale (in frequency and reach) changes everything

Paul Graham@paulg

This is genuinely impressive: someone admits they were wrong on Twitter. What's even more striking is how rare it is.

20h13.1K529

REPLIES1

cryptotwi@cryptotwi1

@BrianRoemmele He got some money, just it, dont be so naive

5h15

Chris Anderson@chr1sa

@davetroy That may have been the original definition, but it is now used in a broader context:

19h4045

Dave Troy@davetroy

@chr1sa I’m well aware that it’s being used that way, but it is a bad language regression and doesn’t do any favors to democracy. It’s a dilution of meaning we don’t need to choose or endorse.

19h1192

James Janopaul-Naylor@jjnaylor02

@chr1sa Ok now teach me how many scans we need, how much compute we need to find cancers that occur 1 in 7,000 people. What resources are needed to create a system you’d trust to tell you to remove an organ?

15h1122

بن عبدالله@abdull99870

@BrianRoemmele The repeatability is the real unlock — not resolution. Cheap + harmless turns screening from a one-shot snapshot into a time-series, so the question flips from "is this abnormal?" to "is this changing?" That's what defuses the overdiagnosis cascade, not faster imaging.

5h271

Owen Greeley@owengreeley

@chr1sa shouldn’t we wait until they actually make it cheap, easy and reliable before we start praising this company? so far we have a marketing video making some impressive claims and that’s it

16h73

Jaxx@Jaxxx_eth

@BrianRoemmele Totally agree, bro. Innovation needs some messy growth to thrive!

5h36

Nicole 𝕏@nasanicole

@BrianRoemmele @TinfoilTricorn It's incredible truly just a thought of not having to lie on my back for 45 minutes getting a PET scan with spinal cancer is huge!

1h7

Corianas_@Corianas_

@BrianRoemmele I will be going in and getting done, I have enough metal in me that MRI's are very unpleasant at best, and to be able to have a regular scan for problems sounds like a dream.

Especially if its part of a regular spa day.

2h6

GeoDev@GeoDev1962

@BrianRoemmele Anchoring Bias is a bitch.

3h3

V0LYX@0xV0LYX

@BrianRoemmele The shift from "that wont work" to "why didnt I think of that" is always the fastest part of tech adoption.

4h3

Allen Green, MD@AllenPGreenMD

@cryptotwi1 @BrianRoemmele Pretty sure he's playing the tech bros for impressions.

3h2