Question: does you're job help save lives ?

Andrew Scott answered on 15 Jun 2015:

That is why I get paid, but it’s not so straightforward. I research new ways to use the MRI scanner. Some of these ideas work and some don’t. Many of the ones that do are small steps that make the MRI scans look a bit clearer for the doctors looking at them. Some of them are bigger ideas and it can take quite a long time before they are useful to doctors as we have to do lots of testing on them.

The idea is though, that in the end doctors can diagnose a disease earlier or they are better able to decide which treatment to give. One of the bits of work done in my department found a new way to see how much iron there is the heart. Patients with a disease called Thallasemia have to have lots of blood transfusions and eventually iron builds up their hearts and can kill them. Using this new MRI technique doctors are able to monitor how much iron is in the hearts of these patients and remove it once it becomes dangerous. This is work done here that really has saved a lot of lives.