Full-Body MRIs: Can They Save Your Life or Are They a Waste of Money? - Business Insider


Full-Body MRI Screening: Promise and Reality for Prostate Cancer Patients

New Standards Emerge as Commercial Interest Grows

As full-body MRI screening continues to gain popularity through direct-to-consumer companies and celebrity endorsements, the medical community is working to establish standardized protocols while grappling with questions about effectiveness, cost, and appropriate use for prostate cancer detection and monitoring.

Recent Developments in Standardization

In January 2025, researchers published new guidelines for whole-body MRI reporting systems specifically designed for prostate cancer patients. The METastasis Reporting and Data System for Prostate Cancer (MET-RADS-P) has emerged as a reliable imaging biomarker for predicting metastatic disease progression and assessing treatment response in men with advanced prostate cancer using whole-body MRI.

The Oncologically Relevant Findings Reporting and Data System (ONCO-RADS) has also been developed to standardize the use of whole-body MRI for cancer screening, with guidelines establishing minimum technical parameters for data acquisition and standardized reporting methods.

Commercial Sector Advances

The FDA has recently cleared several AI-powered enhancements to full-body MRI technology. In February 2025, Ezra received FDA 510(k) clearance for its advanced Ezra Flash AI model, which enhances image quality across the entire body and aims to launch a 15-minute, $500 full-body MRI scan by 2026. Prenuvo also received FDA clearance for its AI-powered body composition analysis, building on its growing member base of over 110,000 individuals.

Prostate Cancer-Specific Applications

For prostate cancer patients, the landscape of MRI screening continues to evolve. Major research from the GÖTEBORG-2 trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that using MRI-targeted biopsies instead of systematic biopsies reduced the risk of detecting clinically insignificant prostate cancer by more than half, while maintaining detection of clinically significant cancers.

Recent guidance from the American Journal of Roentgenology indicates that MRI-based screening strategies for prostate cancer help address limitations in traditional PSA-based screening by improving risk stratification and enabling targeted biopsies.

PSMA-PET Integration

The integration of PSMA-PET with whole-body MRI is gaining traction, with 68Ga-PSMA PET-CT now recommended by many guidelines for detecting biochemically relapsed disease after radical local therapy. Recent NCCN guidelines recommend PSMA PET imaging for patients with PSA recurrence after failure of local therapy due to its greater sensitivity compared to conventional imaging.

Evidence on Effectiveness

Research on full-body MRI screening shows mixed results. A systematic review found that whole-body MRI identified critical and indeterminate findings in 32.1% of patients, with 13.4% having critical findings requiring intervention. A large study of 576 participants found that approximately one-third showed clinically relevant findings, with 2.6% having cancers and 4.8% having intracranial aneurysms.

However, research specifically in high-risk populations, such as those with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, showed a 7% detection rate of previously unknown primary cancers—more than triple the rate of breast cancer detection in high-risk patients.

Medical Community Concerns

Despite commercial enthusiasm, medical experts express caution. University of Michigan radiologist Matthew Davenport warns that whole-body MRIs may do more harm than good in low-risk patients, citing risks of overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and anxiety from incidental findings.

A 2024 systematic review noted that while MRI reduces harm in prostate cancer screening by decreasing unnecessary biopsies, limitations include low positive predictive values and high reader variability, requiring optimization in patient selection and diagnostic thresholds.

Guidelines and Recommendations

Currently, whole-body MRI is officially recommended for cancer screening only in patients with cancer predisposition syndromes like Li-Fraumeni syndrome, where annual whole-body MRI along with brain MRI is considered the screening technique of choice. No major medical organizations recommend routine full-body MRI screening for the general population.

Cost Considerations

For high-risk populations, cost-effectiveness analysis shows that surveillance strategies including rapid whole-body MRIs have a 98% probability of being cost-effective when measured against the $100,000 per life-year gained threshold. However, for average-risk individuals, costs range from $500 to $2,500 per scan, typically not covered by insurance.

Future Outlook

The growing body of research suggests that whole-body MRI for cancer screening shows sensitivity ranging from 50-90% and specificity of 93-95% in disease detection. However, experts emphasize the need for more standardized protocols, better patient selection criteria, and long-term outcome studies.

For prostate cancer patients specifically, the integration of advanced MRI techniques with PSMA-PET imaging appears promising for staging and monitoring, though their role in routine screening remains under investigation.

References

  1. Brueck, H. (2025, August 2). Full-body MRIs: Can they save your life or are they a waste of money? Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/full-body-mri-cancer-screening-prenuvo-ezra-worth-it-2025-8
  2. Parillo, M., & Mallio, C. A. (2025). The Whole-Body MRI Reporting and Data System Guidelines for Prostate Cancer (MET-RADS-P), Multiple Myeloma (MY-RADS), and Cancer Screening (ONCO-RADS). Cancers, 17(2), 275. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers17020275
  3. Hugosson, J., Roobol, M. J., Månsson, M., et al. (2022). Prostate Cancer Screening with PSA and MRI Followed by Targeted Biopsy Only. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(25), 2305-2314. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2209454
  4. Hugosson, J., Roobol, M. J., Månsson, M., et al. (2024). Results after Four Years of Screening for Prostate Cancer with PSA and MRI. New England Journal of Medicine, 391(25), 2363-2374. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2406050
  5. Schoots, I. G. (2025). MRI in Prostate Cancer Screening: A Review and Recommendations. American Journal of Roentgenology. https://www.ajronline.org/doi/10.2214/AJR.24.32588
  6. European Association of Nuclear Medicine & Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. (2023). PSMA PET/CT: joint EANM procedure guideline/SNMMI procedure standard for prostate cancer imaging 2.0. European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, 50(5), 1188-1221. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00259-022-06089-w
  7. National Comprehensive Cancer Network. (2025). PSMA and Beyond 2025: Impact of Clinical Guidelines on the Utilization of PSMA PET. https://www.urotoday.com/conference-highlights/2025-ucsf-ucla-psma-conference/159334-psma-and-beyond-2025-impact-of-clinical-guidelines-on-the-utilization-of-psma-pet.html
  8. Kwee, R. M., & Kwee, T. C. (2019). Whole-Body MRI for Preventive Health Screening: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 51(4), 1162-1169. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6850647/
  9. Petralia, G., Padhani, A. R., Pricolo, P., et al. (2020). Whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WB-MRI) for cancer screening in asymptomatic subjects of the general population: review and recommendations. Cancer Imaging, 20, 34. https://cancerimagingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40644-020-00315-0
  10. Schoots, I. G. (2024). Key learning on the promise and limitations of MRI in prostate cancer screening. European Radiology, 34(11), 7198-7210. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38311703/
  11. Kim, Y., Kim, S. H., Song, B. J., et al. (2021). Whole-body MRI for preventive health screening: Management strategies and clinical implications. European Journal of Radiology, 138, 109644. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0720048X21000644
  12. Ballinger, M. L., Best, A., Mai, P. L., et al. (2017). Baseline Surveillance in Li-Fraumeni Syndrome Using Whole-Body Magnetic Resonance Imaging. JAMA Oncology, 3(12), 1634-1639. https://www.lfsassociation.org/whole-body-mri/
  13. Davenport, M. S., & Michigan Medicine. (2024). Whole-body MRIs aren't as beneficial as they seem. https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/whole-body-mris-arent-beneficial-they-seem
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  15. Padhani, A. R., Lecouvet, F. E., Tunariu, N., et al. (2021). Oncologically Relevant Findings Reporting and Data System (ONCO-RADS): Guidelines for the Acquisition, Interpretation, and Reporting of Whole-Body MRI for Cancer Screening. Radiology, 299(3), 494-507. https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.2021201740
  16. Ezra. (2025, February 20). Ezra Announces New FDA Clearance, Enhancing the Capabilities of Its Full-Body Scan Technology. Globe Newswire. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/02/20/3029686/0/en/Ezra-Announces-New-FDA-Clearance-Enhancing-the-Capabilities-of-Its-Full-Body-Scan-Technology.html
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  20. Full-Body MRIs: Can They Save Your Life or Are They a Waste of Money? - Business Insider

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