That's great news about your MRI results Anonanin but if you'd like to discuss the accuracy of MRI scans with one of our cancer nurses then you give them a call on 0808 800 4040. They're avaiable Monday - Friday between 9a.m - 5p.m.

If you're worried then it may be worth seeing if you can talk things through with your doctor as well.

All the best,

Steph, Cancer Chat Moderator

Hi Anonanin.

MRI scans are very accurate, particularly since the machine can work in several modes. This means that the same part of the body can be scanned for water in one scan, fat in another, and then with the injection of a dye, for possible cancer in another scan. This gives three separate images that can be compared with each other.

However, it does have its limitations:  The first limitation is that each scan takes 4 minutes, and the patient has to lie still inside the machine for scan after scan after scan.  I speak from experience that after 30 minutes, the novelty definitely wears off.  A second limitation is that each slice through the body is 512 x 512 pixels, giving an approximate resolution inside the body of around a couple of millimetres.  This means that small lesions or tumours in the millimetre size range may be lost in the noise.  But perhaps the main limitation is that the images must be interpreted by an experienced human.  The machine can only make the images, but it takes a pathologist to decide what they mean.

All that said, the MRI scanner, and its cousins the CT scanner and ultrasound scanner, provide a level of imaging detail that doctors could only dream about 50 years ago.  I remember when I was a Physics undergrad in the early 1970s chatting with a PhD student who was researching into magnetic resonance, and he mentioned the possibility of scanning bodies, but it was all far into the future and we both thought it was just science fiction.  Now it's science fact!