--- description: We talked to Emi Gal, founder of Ezra, about how the company's $500 scan works. title: Can a Full-Body MRI Help You Live Longer? image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt386ca96bfc851a59/6998cbc5c8dcb4fc29b50aca/emi_gal_longevity.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jan 05, 2026 # Can a Full-Body MRI Help You Live Longer? by [Angela Haupt](/author/angela-haupt/) ## Angela Haupt Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Emi Gal’s work is personal. He has more than 200 moles on his body, which puts him in the highest risk category for skin cancer, and his mother died from metastatic disease that she discovered too late to treat. That inspired him to devote his career to figuring out ways to prevent other people’s moms, dads, children, partners, siblings, and friends from finding out about their cancer when there were no longer any treatment options. “The best thing we can do for cancer patients is find cancer early,” says Gal, who grew up in Romania and studied applied mathematics and computer science. “I realized that the best solution, something that could work, is a full-body MRI—but the challenge is that they're very expensive. With my computer-science hat on, I was like, ‘OK, I think we can use AI and technology to make MRI scans faster, make radiologists faster, and automate a lot of the processes in order to make the scan more affordable.’” The result is [Ezra](https://ezra.com/ "undefined") (Hebrew for “help”), the full-body MRI scanning company Gal founded in 2018\. In 2025, it was acquired by Function Health, a [personalized health-testing platform](https://time.com/7176591/function-health-startup-blood-tests-preventive-medicine/ "undefined"), and the cost of an Ezra scan fell from $1,500 to $499\. The basic MRI scan, which takes less than 30 minutes, images the head, neck, abdomen, and pelvis and can identify more than 500 potential conditions, including cancers in those areas. It also looks for signs of stroke, sinus inflammation, fatty liver disease, gallstones, uterine fibroids, kidney stones, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and more. The company relies heavily on AI to interpret images and identify potential issues, though board-certified radiologists also review Ezra scans. **Read More**: [_Are Plastic Cutting Boards Safe?_](https://time.com/7336434/plastic-cutting-board-material-microplastics-alternatives/ "undefined") Over the past few years—buoyed in part by [celebrity endorsements](https://time.com/6304107/full-body-mri-health-scan/ "undefined")—full-body MRIs have become a health trend. In addition to Ezra, companies like Prenuvo and simonONE offer such scans at various price points. Still, [no major medical association recommends a full-body MRI](https://time.com/7275819/should-you-get-full-body-mri-scan/ "undefined") as preventive care, especially for people with no symptoms or unique risks. In those cases, there’s a good chance you’ll find out about an abnormality that isn’t actually anything to worry about, kicking off anxiety, more medical appointments, and potentially unnecessary interventions that carry risks of their own. (According to Ezra, [nearly 5% of clients](http://functionhealth.com/campaign/the-function-index "undefined") have had a highly suspicious finding for cancer that requires additional follow-up.) Yet to Gal—who has long enjoyed treating himself as a guinea pig for longevity hacks—more information is always a good thing. As part of TIME's series interviewing leaders in the longevity field, we caught up with him to talk about how the Ezra scan works, what the company says it does to minimize false positives, and how he tries to optimize his own health. _This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity._ ## How exactly does Ezra work? We have three AIs at Ezra that we use. No. 1 is called Ezra Flash. It enables us to acquire MRI images faster and then enhance their quality. The challenge with MRIs is that it's a very “noisy” environment, and so to make the scan more high-signal, you need to scan multiple times, which adds time. We just do the scan once, and then we use AI to remove the noise. It allows us to acquire MRI images much faster. The second AI is called Ezra Assist, which was FDA-cleared for prostate cancer. It assists radiologists when they read MRI scans in order to make them faster and potentially more accurate. The final AI is called Ezra Reporter, and it essentially takes a radiology report and translates the terms into plain English. Most people don't know what radiology terms mean, so we use AI to explain the findings in lay terms. Stacking AIs like this has enabled us to decrease the cost of MRI, and then we pass all the savings on to the consumer. ## Has accessibility always been important to you? Yes—my ambition from day one was to start with a high-end product, and with the success of that product, launch an even more affordable product, and that’s a $500 scan. I think we still have room to make it even more affordable, and ultimately, I have an ambition to also have it reimbursed by insurers. I really want everyone to be able to benefit. A $500 scan is relatively affordable for a lot of people, but there are still a lot of people who cannot afford even $500. ## What can an Ezra scan find? The primary focus of the scan is to find cancer in 13 organs in the body. At the same time, MRI is highly sensitive for many other types of diseases. We have found endometriosis, we have found fatty liver disease, we have found disc herniations, we have found aneurysms. We’ve found misplaced IUDs, so a woman thinks she has an IUD and is preventing a potential undesired pregnancy, but if it's misplaced, it's not going to work. There’s so many types of things we’ve found in our scans that are life-changing for people. ## What do you say to people who are too anxious to get a scan, because they don’t want to risk getting bad news? I think it's a very valid concern. [People are often reluctant to be told bad news](https://time.com/7332559/fofo-fear-of-finding-out/ "undefined"), so the thing I always mention is that when it comes to cancer, finding cancer early vs. late is what will make the difference between living or dying from cancer. You don't want to be in the camp of people who just say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to know,’ because by the time you know, it's too late. **Read More**: [_Can a Multivitamin Make Up for a Bad Diet?_](https://time.com/7319708/should-i-take-multivitamin-benefit-nutrition/ "undefined") Oftentimes what I do is I just invite people to try it out. And what I hear is, ‘Oh my God, I got so much peace of mind from doing the scan.’ It gives you so much peace of mind when you look at that report and it tells you, ‘Hey, there’s nothing to be concerned about.’ ## How does the Ezra scan protect against false positives? It's an important concern. Almost everyone has something going on in their body that is benign and insignificant, but if you do a scan that's very sensitive, you will find the thing. And so the concern is, you’re going to find these things and investigate them and do all these follow-up procedures, and then it's going to end up being a nothingburger. We do three things at Ezra to minimize this. One is the report we provide after the scan, which translates the radiology report into plain English. It helps explain which things are important and which aren't. We don't just drop a radiology report on you saying, ‘Hey, you have all these things.’ We give you a report that explains every single finding. Importantly, we rank every finding on a scale of 1 to 5 depending on the severity. One and 2 are green—they’re asymptomatic and fine. **Read More**: [Can Creatine Keep Your Brain Sharp?](https://time.com/7313953/creatine-supplements-benefits-brain/ "undefined") 3 is indeterminate; it's yellow. It's something we should monitor. Let's say you have fatty liver disease—it’s not going to kill you immediately, but if you don’t do anything about it, it will lead to cirrhosis, which will lead to all sorts of other issues. We'll say, ‘Hey, this is something we should monitor, and here's the things you should do in order to reduce your fatty liver.’ Four is red. It’s likely cancer. Five is likely cancer or something even more significant, and you should go to the ER right now. By providing these scores to people, we explain what things they should follow up on and what things they shouldn't. And then finally, the other thing we do is we recommend the scan is repeated every year. That way, you have implicit follow-up on most of the findings. ## What’s your personal routine? How often do you get a full-body scan done? I do at least one a year, and then whenever we have a new scan—and we’re constantly launching new versions—I’m one of the guinea pigs for it. I think I've done more MRI scanning in the past five years than most people alive. ## Have you caught anything important? I did. We have the standard full-body scan, and then you can add a CT scan of the chest, which is good for lung cancer screening and for coronary heart disease assessment. My Ezra scan found that I had coronary calcium at a very young age. That, paired with my Function labs that showed I have high LDL—paired with the fact that I have a family history of heart disease—got me to go on a statin. I went from an LDL of 200 to an LDL of 60, and that’s completely reduced my risk of heart disease. ## You’ve taken on [an annual challenge](https://www.emigal.com/challenges/ "undefined") to improve your health every year since 2008\. What was your challenge last year? I experimented with something that actually goes against the current zeitgeist, which is that a lot of people recommend you take 50 supplements a day, every single day. I used to take 50 supplements a day. And at the beginning of 2025, I was like, ‘This is too much. I don’t have time for it. I wonder if it’s actually doing anything.’ So I ran an N-of-1 experiment where I eliminated all supplements, and I only reintroduced four that have been proven in randomized controlled trials for reducing all-cause mortality: [vitamin D](https://time.com/7288858/should-i-take-vitamin-d-supplement/ "undefined"), omega-3, [magnesium citrate/glycinate](https://time.com/6258780/magnesium-glycinate-sleep-anxiety-tiktok/ "undefined"), and [creatine](https://time.com/7313953/creatine-supplements-benefits-brain/ "undefined"). None of my biomarkers have changed. It’s one of those areas where less is more. ## What’s your challenge for 2026? I’m going to start microdosing 1.5 mg of tirzepatide, which is the dual agonist in GLP-1s. Not for weight loss—I already have a really good BMI—but because it's been shown to help reduce cardiovascular disease risk, inflammation, and the buildup of amyloid beta in the brain, which could be a cause for dementia. I’ll run an N-of-1 experiment on myself and check all the biomarkers, like inflammation markers, and consider self-recorded metrics like my mental focus and energy. _This article is part of the Future of Living, presented by Amazon One Medical—a series dedicated to exploring how and why people are living longer and what this means for individuals, institutions, and the future of society. For other articles on longevity,_ [_click here_](https://time.com/tag/longevity/ "undefined")_._ Can a Full-Body MRI Help You Live Longer? ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/future-of-living/7341603/emi-gal-ezra-full-body-mri/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/future-of-living/7341603/emi-gal-ezra-full-body-mri/"},"headline":"Can a Full-Body MRI Help You Live Longer?","datePublished":"2026-01-05T19:00:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T05:18:10.718Z","description":"We talked to Emi Gal, founder of Ezra, about how the company's $500 scan works.","url":"https://time.com/collections/future-of-living/7341603/emi-gal-ezra-full-body-mri/","keywords":["Longevity","sponsorshipblock"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt386ca96bfc851a59/6998cbc5c8dcb4fc29b50aca/emi_gal_longevity.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Angela Haupt","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/angela-haupt/"}],"creator":"Angela Haupt","articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt386ca96bfc851a59/6998cbc5c8dcb4fc29b50aca/emi_gal_longevity.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/longevity/","name":"Longevity"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/future-of-living/7341603/emi-gal-ezra-full-body-mri/","name":"Can a Full-Body MRI Help You Live Longer?"}}]}] ```