A full-body MRI scan can find cancer in about 1 to 2 out of every 100 people who feel fine and have no symptoms — and that’s more than what mammograms or lung CT scans find on their own, so it might be a good way to catch multiple types of cancer early.

Instead of choosing between whole-body MRI and regular cancer tests like mammograms, doctors should use both together — because MRI can find cancers that other tests don’t check for.

If you get a full-body MRI scan and have no symptoms or known cancer risks, about 1 in 60 people might be found to have cancer they didn’t know about — so it’s kind of helpful, but not super reliable, for finding hidden cancers in healthy people.

When doctors use full-body MRI scans on people who feel fine, about two out of three cancers they find are in body parts that don’t usually get checked during routine screenings—so this scan might catch cancers other tests miss.

When doctors use whole-body MRI scans on people who feel fine and aren’t sick, they find cancer in only about 1.57 out of every 100 people — so it’s not very good at catching cancer early in healthy folks.

When doctors didn’t have a regular test to check for cancer, a special full-body MRI scan found cancer in nearly 7 out of 10 people—so it might help catch cancers that other tests miss.