Digital Matters: Processes of Normalization in Medical Imaging

  With the introduction of advanced computing technologies, medical imaging increasingly entails normalization – through procedures that create, shape, and adjust comparable variables deduced from processes in the living body. The computational rationalities of imaging technologies such as functiona...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.) Calif.), 2018-10, Vol.4 (2), p.1-31
Main Authors: Fitsch, Hannah, Friedrich, Kathrin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Brain research
Digital imaging
Digital media
Dimensional analysis
Gender
Human body
Interdisciplinary aspects
Laboratories
Mathematical models
Medical imaging
Museums
Physiology
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Summary:  With the introduction of advanced computing technologies, medical imaging increasingly entails normalization – through procedures that create, shape, and adjust comparable variables deduced from processes in the living body. The computational rationalities of imaging technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computed tomography (CT) not only determine how human bodies are envisioned and visualized, but also how they need to be aligned with apparatuses to answer experimental and diagnostic inquiries. By drawing on the theoretical concepts of computational rationality and intra-action and on ethnographic observations, we aim to disentangle processes of normalization and intra-actions of bodies and technologies in medical imaging on three levels. First, we show how, in the history of theoretical mathematics, dynamic processes were conceptualized as discrete and hence calculable. In particular, the ideas of Joseph Fourier informed the development of fMRI imaging algorithms, which are currently applied in experimental contexts. Second, we analyze how the application of these algorithms enables and determines practices in fMRI-based research. Third, we explore how bodies and technologies are aligned with tomography scanners on a very material level and thereby demonstrate the convergence of digitalization and materialization on both conceptual and physical levels, which opens up possibilities for visualizing and understanding human bodies. On a theoretical and analytical level, we argue that a critical analysis of digital imaging processes calls for scrutiny of the epistemic and operational preconditions that are actualized but concealed in the application of imaging technologies.
ISSN:2380-3312
2380-3312
DOI:10.28968/cftt.v4i2.29911