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Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency
Magnetic Resonance Imaging, not so long ago a diagnostic tool of last resort, has become pervasive in the landscape of consumer medicine; images of the forbidding tubes, with their promises of revelation, surround us in commercials and on billboards. Magnetic Appeal offers an in-depth exploration of the science and culture of MRI, examining its development and emergence as an imaging technology, its popular appeal and acceptance, and its current use in health care. Understood as modern and uncontroversial by health care professionals and in public discourse, the importance of MRI―or its supposed infallibility―has rarely been questioned. In Magnetic Appeal , Kelly A. Joyce shows how MRI technology grew out of serendipitous circumstances and was adopted for reasons having little to do with patient safety or evidence of efficacy. Drawing on interviews with physicians and MRI technologists, as well as ethnographic research conducted at imaging sites and radiology conferences, Joyce demonstrates that current beliefs about MRI draw on cultural ideas about sight and technology and are reinforced by health care policies and insurance reimbursement practices. Moreover, her unsettling analysis of physicians' and technologists' work practices lets readers consider that MRI scans do not reveal the truth about the body as is popularly believed, nor do they always lead to better outcomes for patients. Although clearly a valuable medical technique, MRI technology cannot necessarily deliver the health outcomes ascribed to it. Magnetic Appeal also addresses broader questions about the importance of medical imaging technologies in American culture and medicine. These technologies, which include ultrasound, X-ray, and MRI, are part of a larger trend in which visual representations have become central to American health, identity, and social relations.
- GenresSociology
208 pages, Paperback
First published April 24, 2008
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January 21, 2011
I was first drawn to this book when I learned that Wolfgang Pauli’s (1900 – 1958) theory on magnetic moments in the 1930s led to potential medical applications of scanning technology. Early machines captured images based on the orientation of the body’s hydrogen atoms when placed under an intense magnetic field. The concept of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-become-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is intriguing to anyone schooled in physics an/or electrical engineering. And the story of its development and evolution is compelling.
Pauli theorized that the movement of an atom’s axial spin must create a magnetic force around the nuclei. This magnetic field, or magnetic moment, will tend to make an atom resonate in response to a specific radio frequency (RF). Isidor Rabi (1898 – 1988) experimented with atoms using RF waves and a changing electromagnetic field (EMF) in the 1930s. His ideas were extended to NMR measurements of bulk materials during the 1940s and 1950s. Chemists, in particular, used NMR technology as a means to identify molecular structure. Such applications put NMR on the path towards becoming a visualization technology.
Medical applications of NMR were driven by Dr. Raymond Damadian (b. 1936) with his studies to diagnose cancer using this visualization technology. His work was driven by President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act in 1971. Extending the visualization capabilities of NMR was chemist Paul Lauterbur (1929 – 2007). He took Damadian’s tissue data with its differing relaxation times and created a gradient in order to extract data for the location of the signal emitted by the nuclei. This composite data could then be coded and transformed into an anatomical picture of the inside of the body.
Joyce’s fieldwork is evident as you read her book. She highlights that “the hierarchy, distance, and periodic antagonism between MRI technicians and radiologists sets them up as opponents, not as members of the same stressed work force.” She interviewed both groups and highlights how the almost 30 million MRI exams performed in the U.S. each year are driven by profit and efficiency. Joyce also addresses how the growing use of MRI machines and exams “constitute a lucrative medical information industry.” One doctor says that MRI use is increasing “because it’s lucrative.”
Magnetic Appeal is a good read. Joyce summarizes the current state of this technology as follows: “Policymakers, scientists, and the public contribute to promoting the idea of visual knowledge when alternative methods of diagnosis might be more effective and less costly.”
Pauli theorized that the movement of an atom’s axial spin must create a magnetic force around the nuclei. This magnetic field, or magnetic moment, will tend to make an atom resonate in response to a specific radio frequency (RF). Isidor Rabi (1898 – 1988) experimented with atoms using RF waves and a changing electromagnetic field (EMF) in the 1930s. His ideas were extended to NMR measurements of bulk materials during the 1940s and 1950s. Chemists, in particular, used NMR technology as a means to identify molecular structure. Such applications put NMR on the path towards becoming a visualization technology.
Medical applications of NMR were driven by Dr. Raymond Damadian (b. 1936) with his studies to diagnose cancer using this visualization technology. His work was driven by President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act in 1971. Extending the visualization capabilities of NMR was chemist Paul Lauterbur (1929 – 2007). He took Damadian’s tissue data with its differing relaxation times and created a gradient in order to extract data for the location of the signal emitted by the nuclei. This composite data could then be coded and transformed into an anatomical picture of the inside of the body.
Joyce’s fieldwork is evident as you read her book. She highlights that “the hierarchy, distance, and periodic antagonism between MRI technicians and radiologists sets them up as opponents, not as members of the same stressed work force.” She interviewed both groups and highlights how the almost 30 million MRI exams performed in the U.S. each year are driven by profit and efficiency. Joyce also addresses how the growing use of MRI machines and exams “constitute a lucrative medical information industry.” One doctor says that MRI use is increasing “because it’s lucrative.”
Magnetic Appeal is a good read. Joyce summarizes the current state of this technology as follows: “Policymakers, scientists, and the public contribute to promoting the idea of visual knowledge when alternative methods of diagnosis might be more effective and less costly.”
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