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Science, Technology & Human Values
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Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Amit Prasad

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology (or prove its nonexistence). Visual extraction of pathology becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational (i.e., converted into a set of isolable, disjoint, and differentiable parts).

Key Words: MRI • medical gaze • cyborg visuality • bifocal gaze • differential viewing

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 30, No. 2, 291-316 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243904271758
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