Wrong Times Two
That mummy you thought was an Egyptian singer is actually a castrated priest. And the images that some journalists (ahem, forbes.com) are calling MRI is actually x-ray CT. The video that’s attached in many of the news articles mistakenly says magnetic resonance tomography, which is technically a thing but most people say magnetic resonance imaging or MRI. If you want to get all technical, it should actually be called nuclear magnetic resonance but the nuclear part is confusing and scares some people. For x-ray based tomography, it’s confusing because sometimes you hear computed aided tomography or CAT scan and you sometimes hear CT for computed tomography. The x-ray part is often omitted. I guess CAT scan sounds better than CT scan, so you probably hear CAT scan more often outside of radiolgy. I prefer dogs and am in radiology so I prefer CT scan but I digress.
Either way, magnetic resonance requires protons, which typically means water. You can imagine that a mummy doesn’t have much water. There are other techniques with magnetic resonance that can be employed but it won’t produce the spectacular (detailed) images you often see with x-ray CT. Here’s one example with MRI (note the emphasis of a hydrated mummy).
Magnetic resonance imaging performed on a hydrated mummy of medieval Korea
J Anat. 2010 Mar; 216(3): 329–334.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829391/
Anyway, it’s a neat story about using x-ray CT to identify a mummy that’s been in the Russian Hermitage Museum for a long time. It was thought to be the mummy of a famous Egyptian singer called Babat. It turns out that it’s a castrated priest named Pa-kesh. The attached news article does a better job than Forbes. At least the Daily Fail version didn’t say MRI.
Here’s a direct link to the video if you’re interested.
If you need a refresher on how x-ray CT and MRI works:
Medical Imaging 101 pt 2: CT
Medical Imaging 101 pt 3: MRI
Yeah, I was pretty much astounded by that whole Forbes article.
Susan Jahn astounded, not in a good way.
Exactly Chad Haney! How could they print that with so much wrong? I could see if it was the Daily Fail, but Forbes? I expect better.
Oooops that a clanger ant it
Very understandable