A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Biomedical Imaging and Optics

Biomedical imaging is the application of engineering methods to detect and visualize biological processes. Biomedical imaging techniques are used clinically, to detect and diagnose diseases, and in basic life sciences research, to study normal anatomy and function. Biomedical imaging is usually non-invasive or minimally invasive and involves the radiation or detection of a known physical quantity, like sound, ultrasound, radiation or magnetism. Electronic data processing and analysis is then used to generate visual images.

Biomedical imaging has obvious benefits for science and healthcare. Concerns have been raised with diagnostic imaging, however. It has been worried that imaging for this purpose may lead to an excess of diagnoses. Diseases may be revealed that were not under investigation or for which no therapy is available, or conditions may become visible that indicate an increased probability to develop a disease. This may confront medical specialists and patients with information and (moral) choices they may not wish to have. Patients may not want to know that they have a disease for which no good therapy is available, or be confronted with a painful uncertainty whether they have or could contract a certain disease. This raises moral issues about not only the use but also the design of imaging technologies: should they be designed, for example, so that bodily conditions are made visible selectively?

Moral controversy also extends to brain imaging, ...