Is imaging increasing health or profit?
Brain imaging is a huge business. The benefits of this research field are vast, the costs are high and most important of all: everybody wants in.
Wasteful behavior of X-rays
This (dutch) article (May 2013) sums up the problem: we’re getting scanned too much. The main problem is the high number of CT scans. Because of this Belgium ranks very high in ionizing radiation (2 millisievert/capita), which isn’t a very healthy situation.
Worse still a lot of these examinations weren’t … Read on...
Brain imaging has come a long way since its earliest techniques. Already in 1918 a technique called ventriculography was invented. This technique consisted of injecting filtered air into the ventricles, the hollow cavities inside the brain, and included a high risk for the patient. Seeing that it did provide a lot of useful surgical information, new techniques were started to be developed.