Scanning your whole body with an MRI might help find hidden cancers in people who feel fine, but doctors don’t recommend it yet because we don’t have enough proof it works well enough for everyone.

Using whole-body MRI to scan healthy people without symptoms for hidden cancers isn't very useful because it rarely finds cancer, finds lots of harmless bumps that cause worry, isn't done the same way everywhere, and we don't know if it actually helps people live longer.

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 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.

Doctors use full-body MRI scans to look for cancer in people who feel fine, but since everyone uses different scan settings, results can vary a lot — making it hard to trust or use these scans widely.

Doctors use whole-body MRI scans to look for cancer in people who feel fine, but since everyone uses different scan rules, the results can vary a lot — making it hard to trust or use these scans reliably.