For anyone who's had an MRI - seeing it for yourself.

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

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This is not a medical advice thread.

I had an MRI in December 2007 because I am suffering from hearing loss in my left ear.

I also happen to work in the microscopy and imaging field and knew that if I could get hold of the data, I could examine it myself and render it in our software.

I've just managed to get hold of the raw data and thought I would let others know, if they are interested in seeing theirs for themselves:

I spoke with the doctor who referred me and explained that I knew I had a right to see any medical data about me, including images and scans. He agreed but cautioned that it might be difficult to get hold of the raw data from the scan because of the proprietary image formats used and some copyright issues due to the manufacturers of the MRI machines. (I don't know if this is true or was just a brush-off).

Anyway, a few months later I received a letter from the medico-legal department of the hospital with a form to request the data and to send a £20 admin fee. They mentioned photocopies and that is what I expected to receive. I was really pleased when a CD showed up in the post.

As I expected, the images are in DICOM format, but the CD had a viewer on so that may be all you need. In order to render the scans in the software we use at work, I needed to export them as TIFF, or some other standard format.

For that I used IrfanView with a DICOM plugin (the formats plugin on the plugins section of that site). I needed to rename the images with a .dcm extension for IrfanView to open them.

I then converted them to TIFF (you could use JPG or BMP, whatever) and imported them into our sofware for rendering them.

As for open-source renderers, you could try Osirix (Mac-only, also a DICOM viewer) or try BioImageXD (Windows).

Perhaps what was most interesting of all, is that a file on the CD holds the diagnosis information and I found out a lot more than the doctor told me ;)

I hope this proves useful to others.

EDIT - TTIUWP!

Here's a low-res (the actual images are 512 x 512 each) image showing each slice they took of my head:

MRI_head_all.jpg


EDIT 2 - Uploaded a couple of very small (256k each) movies of the renders:

IAMs (Internal Auditory Meatus)
Whole Head
 
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Sounds complicated but very cool at the same time. What do the images look like, is it a series of flat images or is it a 3D model that might be opened up in 3DS etc or Autocad?
 
I had an MRI scan and they let me have the results, it looked a lot like an xray except a little more detailed.
 
They are basically just a few directories of individual images with no extension. Renaming them ".dcm" and batch converting with IrfanView makes them viewable.

Each directory has a different orientation - one for the whole head done at low resolution, one for the section through the middle of my head done at high resolution (to see the ear canals and ossicles and cochlear etc.)

So, a series of flat images. To get a 3D Model, you need something that can render a series of such images. The software I use at work can be used for exactly that.

I must say that although I'm impressed with the resolution of the middle part of my head that they took, the image of my whole head, when rendered, is really low resolution. I can understand why (time and money), but it would be awesome to have my whole head rendered in high detail, rather than just my ear canals :D

EDIT - Posted low-res shots of whole-head scan in OP.
 
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I've had 3 MRI scans and some other sort of scan and each time been given the images.

Quite cool being able to see it in 3D format though
 
I had a period where I would phase out in a weird way, got an MRI and bought the scans off them afterwards. They sent me a DVD and a huge folder with the full size scans in on that xray type plastic stuff.

I converted a small part in to an animated gif as an avatar

mint_sauce_brain_100x100.gif


Nothing was wrong btw, and the weirdness has passed :)

EDIT: I think like you the DVD images I have are really low res. :(
 
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Mint_Sauce said:
........Snip.......

EDIT: I think like you the DVD images I have are really low res. :(
Click to expand...

Nice post! :D

The images I have are pretty high resolution laterally (X and Y) but really low axially (Z) - i.e. the spacing seems to be about 15mm between the slices in my whole head, but about 1mm for the small section around my ears.

The images themselves are all 512 x 512 in 8bit.
 
Jimbo Mahoney said:
Nice post! :D

The images I have are pretty high resolution laterally (X and Y) but really low axially (Z) - i.e. the spacing seems to be about 15mm between the slices in my whole head, but about 1mm for the small section around my ears.

The images themselves are all 512 x 512 in 8bit.
Click to expand...

Just checked and mine are the same 512x512, thinking about getting one printed and hung up somewhere, not sure it will match the rest of the decor though. :D
 
So, theoretically, if you could convince lindsay lohan to step into an MRI scanner, you could make a very accurate model of her afterwards...

(just saying :D)
 
Erm, my physio gave me the CD when I turned up for my first appointment (fractured ankle/torn ligaments following a kite jump gone wrong). We went through the images for 10mins whilst she explained to me what each part was, what was wrong and what we were going to do to fix it.

Thought it was all part of the service?
 
Hmm cool and interesting i had one about 10 weeks to find out how far my cholestenoma had gone on my right ear drum and to help the surgeon decide on her next actions.
Might ask them for my scan next time i go.
 
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