Doctors might be able to use a full-body MRI scan as the first test to find cancer in kids, because one study showed it was good at spotting cancer and not giving false alarms — but this was only done in one hospital.

If a child gets a whole-body MRI and it comes back negative, there’s a 99.1% chance they don’t have cancer — so doctors can be very confident the child is cancer-free based on this scan.

Using whole-body MRI to screen everyone for cancer isn't a good idea right now because it often misses cancers, finds too many harmless things that cause worry, isn't done the same way everywhere, and we don't know if it actually helps people live longer or healthier lives.

Using a full-body MRI scan on people who feel fine can sometimes find hidden health problems they didn’t know they had—and some of those problems might need a doctor’s attention.

A special kind of full-body scan called MRI with a specific setting (STIR) can find cancer in kids with very high accuracy—correctly spotting it in almost all cases where it’s there and correctly saying it’s not there when it isn’t.

Using a full-body MRI scan might help find cancers in body parts where doctors don’t normally screen people, like without a regular test.