Midjourney pivots to medical imaging with a 60-second full-body scanner
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MidjourneyMidjourney, best known for its AI image generator, has made a sharp turn into healthcare. On June 18, 2026 it unveiled Midjourney Medical and a whole-body "Ultrasonic CT" scanner (Fullbody Ultrasonic Computational Tomography) that the company says builds a 3D map of your body — down to a fraction of a millimeter — in about 60 seconds, roughly 100× faster than a traditional MRI. Crucially, it uses sound, not radiation: it is not a CT or X-ray.
How it works
You step onto a platform and are slowly submerged in water (about two inches per second), passing through a ring of roughly half a million sand-grain-sized ultrasonic emitters and sensors that fire and record sound waves from every angle — "echolocation, like a dolphin," as the company puts it. The hardware leans on an exclusive co-development deal with Butterfly Network (ultrasound-on-chip), reportedly worth up to ~$74M over five years.
The "spa," not the clinic
Midjourney is framing this as wellness rather than diagnosis — there is no regulatory clearance and the device is a first-generation prototype. The plan: a ~25,000 sq ft flagship Midjourney Spa in San Francisco around late 2027 (saunas, cold plunges, and "cozy rooms with pools of golden light which softly scan your body"), scaling to 50,000 scanners worldwide by 2031.
"We've dreamed of something as powerful as MRI, and as casual as a trip to the spa, and we're unveiling a path to that."
Founder David Holz called it "the first entirely new whole-body medical imaging technology in five decades." The reception has been split: some coverage is intrigued, while critics (The Register, Pivot to AI) have invoked Theranos comparisons given the prototype status and lack of clearance.
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