Sociotechnical anatomy: Technology, space, and body in the MRI unit

In recent years, biomedical research and clinical practices have become increasingly dependent on new imaging technologies. The use of digital X-ray, computer tomography, or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has changed the ways biomedical knowledge is produced and applied in laboratories and hospitals, and it has transformed how bodies are seen and understood in medicine and society today. These transformations are not only emerging from the employment of images in diagnostic or interventional procedures, or from the adoption and incorporation of visual medical knowledge when patients get to see their body scans. They are also intertwined with the sociotechnical practices by which a medical image is constructed as an artifact within the laboratory or clinical setting. In this article, I focus on the implications of such practices for bodies of patients, technologists, and physicians, which are involved in the process of medical image production. I am interested in how epistemic practices, material conditions, and social norms contribute to the shaping of bodies when an image is fabricated in a specifi c MRI unit.