How fMRI Works" Medical technology has come so far in recent years that it's now possible for imaging scans to dissect the body into wafer-thin pictures and create three-dimensional models of organs and tissues to find abnormalities and diagnose disease.
Yet a relatively new type of scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) takes the technology one step farther. Not only can it help diagnose diseases of the brain -- it might also enable doctors to get inside our mental processes to determine what we're thinking and feeling. fMRI might even be able to detect whether we're telling the truth. How MRI Works" Dr.
Raymond Damadian, a physician and scientist, toiled for years trying to produce a machine that could noninvasively scan the body with the use of magnets. Along with some graduate students, he constructed a superconducting magnet and fashioned a coil of antenna wires. Since no one wanted to be the first one in this contraption, Damadian volunteered to be the first patient. When he climbed in, however, nothing happened. Damadian was looking at years wasted on a failed invention, but one of his colleagues bravely suggested that he might be too big for the machine. 1.