SPOTLIGHT
The Art of MRI
By Ashley P. Taylor
Managing Editor
Andy Ellison never thought of himself as an artist until people
started calling him one. Ellison runs the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine at Boston University School of Medicine’s
Center for Biomedical Imaging, which is used for research studies about how the brain works. MRI machines create images of
soft tissue based on the way molecules respond to applied magnetic fields. He started making what we call “art” when to test the
apparatus, he scanned an orange and discovered that its innards,
imaged slice by slice, were visually intriguing. He started examining other fruits and vegetables with the machine and launched a
blog, Inside Insides, to showcase the work. He and his girlfriend
eat the fruit after Ellison has scanned it, resourcefulness that can
sometimes require an adventurous appetite. (They didn’t eat the
durian fruit, known for its aroma of rotting flesh.)
“To be honest, it was a little bit weird for people to start telling
me that I was an artist, because I don’t really see it,” Ellison said.
“I think it looks beautiful, so in that regard, yeah, sure, you can
call it art, but I didn’t make the fruits look like that; that’s the
way they naturally look… It’s just sort of showing people another
way to look at them.”
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