Tech
Midjourney wants to scan your body with half a million ultrasonic sensors, at a spa
Looking ahead: Midjourney built its name on AI-generated images. Now, it is talking about something far more ambitious: scanning the human body. In a post this week, the company outlined plans for a body-scanning system built around ultrasonic sensing and large-scale data capture. The idea is to generate detailed, three-dimensional images of the body in under a minute, with performance the company says could rival MRI scans but without the same discomfort.
The concept is still largely theoretical, but the company describes a system built around an enormous number of tiny sensors working in tandem. A person would pass through a scanning chamber where ultrasonic signals are directed at the body from all sides, capturing internal data from multiple angles at once. Midjourney describes the setup as a softly lit, pool-like space where people descend through a ring of sensors that operate on echolocation principles to build a detailed internal image of the body.
At full scale, the company envisions a ring containing roughly half a million sensors, each about the size of a grain of sand. Together, they would generate a constant stream of ultrasonic signals, producing what Midjourney says could amount to terabytes of data every second.
That volume of information is central to the company’s approach. “You want as much data as you can get about your health as quickly and as cheaply as possible,” the company wrote. “In other words, you want a technology optimized for getting as many megabytes per second per dollar of information about your body.”
Collecting that much data, however, is only part of the problem. Turning it into something usable is another matter entirely. Midjourney acknowledges it still has to solve what it calls a ‘major computational task’: turning noisy, overlapping ultrasonic signals into clear, stable images.
That challenge remains unsolved, and the company has not said how close it is to overcoming it.
What makes the proposal more unusual is how Midjourney plans to use the technology. Rather than limiting it to hospitals or diagnostic labs, the company is building a consumer-facing concept around it. Its first location, called the Midjourney Spa, is expected to open in downtown San Francisco before the end of next year.
The setting is meant to feel more like a high-end wellness space than a medical facility, with features like hot tubs, cold plunges, and private rooms. Inside those rooms, the scanning system would operate quietly in the background. Midjourney describes them as “cozy rooms with pools of golden light which softly scan your body.”
“The scans are a side-effect,” the company wrote. “You barely think of them when going to the spa. But suddenly, you have a huge library of data about your health.”
That framing suggests a shift away from one-off scans and toward continuous or repeated imaging that is built into a routine experience. It also raises practical questions about how such data would be handled, particularly given its volume and sensitivity.
Midjourney says it intends to send early test data from the scanner to the FDA, aiming to secure regulatory approval for future devices with increased capabilities. At the same time, it is already looking beyond a single location, with plans to expand to additional cities starting in 2028.
For now, many details remain unclear, including how far along the technology actually is. But the direction is clear enough: Midjourney wants to go from making images for screens to imaging what’s inside people, using dense arrays of sensors and heavy-duty data processing to do it.
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