How often do full-body MRIs actually find cancer?
Hacker News
February 13, 2026
AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary
Full-body MRIs have sparked a heated debate in the medical community as a promising but controversial tool for early cancer detection. Proponents like Prenuvo, a startup offering full-body MRI services, argue that these scans can identify potential health issues before symptoms arise, potentially saving lives. However, critics such as Dr. Manjiri Dighe of the University of Washington School of Medicine caution that whole-body MRIs are still in their clinical infancy, lacking sufficient longitudinal data to prove their effectiveness in saving more lives than they might complicate through overdiagnosis. While non-invasive and highly sensitive, the scans remain expensive—ranging from several hundred to thousands of dollars—and are not typically covered by insurance, making them accessible only to those who can afford them.
Research highlights mixed results regarding the benefits of full-body MRIs. A 2020 study found that while 95% of asymptomatic patients had abnormal findings, only 1.8% of these were cancerous. Prenuvo's Polaris Study, which tracked 1,011 patients, reported that nearly half of the biopsies performed
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Originally published on Hacker News on 2/13/2026