• Question: What is a MRI machine?

    Asked by 665medh27 to Christopher on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Christopher Mirfin

      Christopher Mirfin answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      MRI stands for “magnetic resonance imaging”. You lay down inside a large donut shaped magnet. The magnet slightly magnetises the atoms in your body, which then give off a radio wave signal. Different materials in your body (e.g. fat, muscle, bone) behave differently in the magnet field, so we get different signals. We can turn these signals into an image of the inside of your body in great detail. Xrays pretty much only show bone, not fat/muscle. 🙂

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