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Comment by thaw13579 | Hacker News Reader

Cool work and proof of concept, and very excited to see where this goes. However, I do think there is enough exaggeration and missing information here that it warrants some critical appraisal. What's really missing is a comparison and validation with any existing medical imaging tech. Whole brain, contrast-free neurovascular imaging is essentially solved with MRI, why not run a scan and compare? Ultrasound is of course portable and less expensive, but MRIs are actually widely available in most cities at reasonable cost for medical workflows, and low-field brain MRI is addressing the portability and cost issues to some extent. I guess they are pitching this as a wearable "telepathy" device, which I think appropriately differentiates their product, but of course, this wording also invokes a framing that "you won't / don't need to know how it works," which invites skepticism and a higher bar for validation in my view.

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"MRIs are actually widely available in most cities at reasonable cost" - I live in one of those first-world countries, and our citizens regularly wait many months if not over a year to get a single MRI scan. Yes, it's not just an issue of the MRI but the entire medical system, but the point still stands. Were there machines that were one or more orders of magnitude cheaper and simpler to run - I think we would see a marked increase in availability.

I agree on your ground-truth desire, and I would hope they've done a lot of that to validate what we see here.

I completely agree that's an issue, although more of an economic / public health policy issue than a technical one. There are low field MRI systems, such as the one made by Hyperfine that are, like you say, an order of magnitude cheaper and simpler to run. We should have these everywhere, IMO

https://www.hyperfinemri.com/

MRIs are fundamentally expensive. Yes we can bring the price down a bit, and we can set more money aside for them, but they’ll always be limited by their price.

Even if this technique is much worse (I can certainly believe it is) the price might allow uses that would never be practical with MRI even with the best financial support. For example, ultrasound might be viable for use in GPs or small medical facilities which could never dream of justifying an MRI machine.

Yes totally, and ultrasound already does wonders in that regard. It's a good strategy to focus on the specific use cases that match the strengths of the tech. I think MRI will be useful in validating and mapping out those cases.

Why would they remain fundamentally expensive? It is a fixed machine (so eventually you recoup the investment) and running consumes nothing other than electricity and a paper gown. MRIs cost under $200 in Japan.

> $200

This makes more sense than the comment elsewhere here that says $50.

My guess: It would be a basic scan with minimal sequences and low quality at that price.

Is $200 close to what it costs the hospital, or after subsidies?

$200 is the cost for the hospital, they "resell" it for $750-1500 mostly paid by insurance

With insurance in the US they’re $750 each… As in elbow and wrist on the same arm count separately…

The methods described in the main article refer specifically to neurovascular imaging. In order to have a higher resolution, they’re making use of microbubbles (which need to be prepared and injected just prior to imaging).

There is no world where vascular imaging with a methodology like this is better than what I can do today in a GP clinic with a handheld GE or butterfly (or similar) US probe for anything that matters:

- for dvts and thrombus I can already image them

- if it’s in the brain the last thing that is useful for you to do is fuck around in a small clinic when you should be getting to a major tertiary centre as soon as possible

They are claiming to want to detect CTE which normally is only diagnosable in an autopsy, I thought. Can current MRI do that? Right now we get former NFL players offing themselves with gunshots to the chest, intentionally leaving the brain intact for postmortem scanning, so posterity can figure out what was wrong with them. It's painful to think about.

My impression isn’t that they are trying to improve CTE imaging (did it say that in the article?!) but somehow approach the resolution of being able to run the blood flow data through a black box so they can demonstrate what the occipital cortex is processing. I mean, that’s literally the first part of the article?

Can MRI/CT demonstrate CTE.

Well, like a lot of things which as alzheimers, that is still a pathological diagnosis for the most part, to the best of my knowledge (not post mortem scanning but out some brain tissue on a slide), but this belies the general fact that getting the tissue diagnosis is really not that important to anyone except a pedant, because yes MRI will show changes in grey/white matter differentiation and size compared to age and sex weighted cohort; and CT will show similar; and in fact it is the history and examination that practically matter to both the patients and their family.

So while it’s nice to have a totally 100% bulletproof ‘diagnosis’ for labelling purposes, practically on history and exam it’s not going to change how they are managed or what they and their family do say to day; given that both CTE and basically any of the dementias don’t have any treatment associated with them, and the current neuro imaging we have can deliver much higher resolution than what this is promising anyway (I mean even CT angio, and it’s not using ‘advanced imaging processes’ to create data out of noise)

Many months to a year for an MRI? Wow, in the USA, we can get MRI's the same day or at worst case, week. It's been that way for a decade or more.

> Wow, in the USA, we can get MRI's the same day or at worst case, week.

You can. And the cost is higher than almost anywhere on earth.

You can get them quickly in most places with a publically funded healthcare system, it’s just that a priority patient is very very sick and you never want to be that person.

Scarcity demands some means of rationing out the product. Setting higher prices is one means of doing this, so only those with some means of paying can get it. Another approach is via wait times, where only those who can wait and afford the time penalty can get it. There are other variations, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The scarcity comes from waiting to get preapproval from your physician and health insurance. If you are willing to pay out of pocket, there are many private MRI clinics that will scan you to your heart's content, as quickly as you want, as long as the payment clears.

Granted, anything you find in that reading won't be accepted by your physician or insurance company, so it's more of a checkup for you and you alone. And most scans will find something anomalous. We're all asymmetrical and lumpy. so take that as you will.

> anything you find in that reading won't be accepted by your physician or insurance company,

Surely that it isn't the norm? Where do you live that the (I assume government run) health system dismisses evidence when its collection wasn't sanctioned by official channels?

They are mistaken. I am a practicing radiologist in the US. We regularly work-up findings from private pay whole body screening MRIs and the workups are covered by insurance.

The scarcity comes from there only being a finite number of the devices.

But I was really speaking more broadly, about healthcare in general. There are only so many doctors, so many MRIs, so many heart surgeons, so many this or that. Giving everyone a bunch of extra money so they could pay the current prices doesn't do anything to address the scarcity, so everyone flush with those subsidies will just bid up the prices - which is exactly what happened.

Your country has decided to ration MRIs.

Here in Australia, it is a one to two day wait for a MRI. Costs 240 AUD, (160 USD ) for a 1.5 Tesla MRI and AUD 400 for a 3 Tesla MRI just up the road.

And if I mark the request Urgent, I can send a patient 5 minutes up the road and have it done within the hour.

Are you in the UK ? I know that the UK health system has effectively collapsed, due to that country's poverty and chaos.

Even in Sudan the waiting time is less than in your country:

"Due to the ongoing conflict in Sudan, healthcare infrastructure and diagnostic imaging services have faced severe disruptions, with wait times for an MRI now extending from several weeks to months"

As an Australian I've had specialists say improved resolution is leading to over diagnosis and over presentation risks. An argument in the margins and one which loses its force as we learn to interpret finer grained imaging better, do you see this as a valid critique? (The case I last heard of was a future blockage/calcification risk in the carotid which the specialist said was way way too young to act on and would not have been noted before imaging improved)

> do you see this as a valid critique?

It's a valid point to raise, and a point critical of "boutique" medicine practices specialising in insecurities of the rich.

In a nutshell our flesh is rarely homogenous, more often tarnished by odd blemishes and gnarly growths that often amount to naught.

Experienced work a day doctors appreciate seeing odd lumps earlier but refrain from taking any action until some threshold is crossed "for fear of doing greater harm" - the knives that cut things out, the concoctions that burn things away often come with side effects.

Contrasting that, the Lamborghini doctors actively self promoting their genius on 60 Minutes and other Australian paid journaltising media - they're up for any excuse to charge for an "essential procedure" (pinky promise no failures).

Improved resolution is sometimes irrelevant, but the advent of high Telsa scans has improved multiple sclerosis diagnosis and has led to revision of the MacDonald criteria. Particularly the addition of of the central vein sign as an imaging marker and the addition of the paramagnetic rim lesion https://radiopaedia.org/articles/mcdonald-diagnostic-criteri...

As for incidentally found abnormalities, acting on every abnormality is AI level dumb. One has to use Bayesian reasoning and consider risk, context and the likelihood of the lesion being real.

This is in Canada. Our healthcare problems are both well known and well documented, but also strongly resistant to being solved. I do wish we had a system as efficient as what you describe. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of this nonsense. And it is actively costing lives every year. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of course.

No joke, it’s actually a lot easier to schedule an assisted suicide than it is to receive proper treatment in a large number of cases.

As the article says, their ultrasound machine costs about as much as a smartphone. It’s about $4000.

An MRI machine costs roughly 1000x as much.

> An MRI machine costs roughly 1000x as much.

The running costs are also eye watering.

Not your point, but… Do smartphones cost $4000 dollars now??

No but that's the order of magnitude. The high end is commonly a bit over $1k.

The foldables are around 2k

A $1m machine with (say) $100k of annual operating costs with a 10-year lifespan. Assume low cost of capital, call it $200k/year for those 10 years.

The machine itself covers its cost at only ~84 monthly scans @ $200 each. That says to locate near population centers where the demand exceeds 84 scans. At the global mean of scans/population, said "population centers" only need to be about 15k residents.

Labor costs + junk fees make them appear expensive.

> MRIs are actually widely available in most cities at reasonable cost

Typical wait time for an MRI in Canada is 2 months.

Yes, that is a economic & public health policy problem that really needs to be solved. We can look to Japan as example of what's possible, they have invested in nearly twice the number of scanners per capita of Canada, and they can get same-day MRIs for $50, roughly speaking.

> they can get same-day MRIs for $50

I’d like to see a breakdown on how they do that. Staffing alone is a multiple of that.

From what I know, seems like a mix of medical price fixing by the gov't, adoption of lower cost hardware, and universal healthcare. There's apparently less bureaucracy, perhaps because there is no need for negotiation at every step of the process?

There are big costs. The hardware, the facility (RF cage and chillers), power, water, staff, RIS/PACS etc etc.

I can’t see how you can do it for $50. Does the ‘universal healthcare’ bit mean that the government is paying most the bill and it’s $50 out of pocket?

Yes, $50 was a rough out-of-pocket estimate, the amortized cost per scan for operation alone is probably on the order of hundreds of dollars per scan, assuming high utilization.

One funny thing about MRIs is the magnet is always on, so there could be some clever ways to reduce costs running them after hours.

> there could be some clever ways to reduce costs running them after hours.

It seems like a dedicated round the clock facility housing at least dozens of MRI machines ought to offer significant economies of scale. I wonder if I'm wrong about that or if there's some other reason we don't see this approach taken by governments.

The staffing costs then skyrocket. 1.5x or double time. However, the main obstacle is a lack of staff. Good staff are hard to find and worth what they cost. And they usually don't want to work out of hours. The economies of scale are interesting. Eg PACS/RIS cost very little more when you increase scans done, and rent is a fixed cost. The best thing that happens are you increase scanners at a the management of no-shows. Patients fail to turn up regularly (a 'did not arrive', DNA). With more imaging going on, you just grab the next available patient, the gap ends up later on, then you make a new booking. The record at my site is 6 DNAs and no slots missed. I run a small MRI service.

> 1.5x or double time.

Is the premium really that large for the night shift at (for example) a hospital? But even if you can't do 24/7 presumably there are physicians and technicians who would be willing to do either early morning or late evening without demanding much of a premium.

A massive daytime only facility should at least enjoy reduced capex and maintenance burdens if they have enough machines in one place. Less duplicated infrastructure and everything closer at hand.

Although if as you say even a small service can paper over 6 DNAs without missing a slot then maybe there isn't all that much to be gained here.

I’ve just checked the contract for the largest employer of techs (in New Zealand) and they only get 1.25X for night shifts. This is the rate at public hospitals. Private employers pay more and the penal rates are more aggressive - due in part to none of us wanting nights or weekends worked.

However that’s a bit meaningless as night shifts don’t exist. MRI is run as an oncall service and only acute scans are done at night - good luck getting a consultant to come in for anything less.

There are staff who like early starts (6am) and a smaller number who like to finish a bit later 6-9pm).

Techs are lucky enough to be in demand and if an employer pushes too hard, they’ll go somewhere that’s a better fit.

We only site 2 MRs next to each other, so savings are going to be minimal but we do see staffing advantages and less downtime. Coils scan swap between machines, one chiller can supply both MR scanners (just… be careful).

https://apex.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Te-Whatu-Ora-...

Romania: for a head MRI on demand - not more than a few days and less than 400 Euros.

That’s more believable than $50, and isn’t out of whack with what’s achievable where I am (New Zealand).

Depends for what reason. I trained in Canada. Studies are triaged priority 1 through 4 in most provinces. Nowhere in Canada is a high priority MRI waiting 2 months.

most cities where?

Here are OECD and WHO reports on regional availability of MRI:

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025...

https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...

Africa, Central & South America are clearly underserved, perhaps a good opportunity for ultrasound and low-field MRI

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