Midjourney reveals an ultrasound-based full-body scanning device

In short: Midjourney, best known for making AI images, has shown a new device that aims to scan the inside of your whole body using ultrasound.

What happened

Midjourney CEO David Holz showed off the company’s first hardware product, called the Midjourney Scanner. Midjourney is better known for its AI image generator, which many people use for things like creating pictures of animals or fantasy scenes.

The scanner is described as an ultrasound-based full-body scanner. Ultrasound is a common medical tool that uses sound waves to create pictures inside the body, a bit like how sonar works underwater.

According to Holz, the device uses a ring of sensors to capture many vertical slices of your body and then builds detailed 3D images. He said it is meant to look at things like muscle, fat, bone, and organs. Holz also said the goal is image quality that is comparable to an MRI in many ways, and he suggested people could scan as often as once a year or even daily.

Midjourney Medical says it developed the scanner in partnership with Butterfly Network, an ultrasound technology company. The Verge reports that the scanning process involves stepping onto a platform that moves into water and passes through a ring of thousands of ultrasound sensors, and the scan is expected to take about 60 seconds.

Midjourney also has job listings that describe a goal of building and launching a “full-body ultrasound CT scanner” and delivering “preventative scanning” through what it calls a “spa experience” in San Francisco.

Why it matters

If this works as described, it could make it easier for people to track changes in their bodies over time, like checking your weight regularly but with far more detail. It also raises practical questions, like how results would be explained, who gets access to the data, and how doctors would use scans that happen very often.

Source: The Verge AI