Midjourney launches a whole-body ultrasound scanner it markets as 'Ultrasonic CT'

Midjourney, the AI image-generation lab, has moved into medical hardware. On June 17 it announced Midjourney Medical, a whole-body ultrasound scanner it markets as "Ultrasonic CT" — a name that frames the device as a fast full-body scan, though the company is explicit that it uses ultrasound, not the radiation of a CT or X-ray machine.

The pitch is speed and access. In Midjourney's description, a person lies on a platform that descends through a ring of underwater sensors, which the company says is built from roughly half a million tiny elements that each act as both speaker and microphone. The waves are reconstructed by a compute cluster into a 3D body map; Midjourney says the system resolves detail "down to a fraction of a millimeter" at "nearly a hundred times the speed" of MRI, with a stated goal of a 60-second scan.

What the device is not, today, is a diagnostic tool. The scanner is not cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for diagnosis, and Midjourney says it will start with non-diagnostic "body composition maps" that need no clearance while it submits test results to the agency over time. The roadmap is long: a "research spa" and trials over the next year, a custom-silicon scanner by 2028, and a stated 2031 target of 50,000-plus scanners and about a billion scans a month. The first "Midjourney Spa" — scanning rooms alongside saunas and cold plunges — is planned for San Francisco in 2027.

Several commercial details come from outlet reporting, not Midjourney's own page: the scanner is reportedly being developed with handheld-ultrasound maker Butterfly Network, which is said to have licensed its ultrasound-on-chip technology to Midjourney, against a reported investment of more than $74 million. One report puts the current prototype's scan time near 20 minutes, well short of the 60-second goal.

Midjourney, which says it has no investors and is funded as a "community-backed research lab," claims early imaging could eventually avoid "30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs." That is a company projection, not a demonstrated result.