Absolutely true. Do you have a proper tool to look through the DICOM images? The CD's usually come with Windows software, but I'm a Mac person, so I use Horos which is free opensource.
I said to my consultant that I'd love to have someone explain the full body MRI scan to me. His eyes lit up and he said,
"You know, the radiologists are always moaning that they sit in an office and never meet patients. He'd probably love to do this."
My consultant set it up and even wanted to come along too, but couldn't make it, so it was just the radiologist and myself.
The radiologist spent an hour with me, going through the scan in detail as he had done originally, and explaining all the interesting things. He starts at the top of the scull, and works down in 3mm slices through the scull and brain. In his report, he'd commented on a couple of white matter signal anomalies in the brain, so I asked about that. They are tiny bits of dead brain, and apparently someone of my age would normally have many more, so that was more of a plus point than the minus point I'd initially assumed. There was detailed reporting on my spine, with some dehydrated discs resulting in some loss of height, again, normal for my age. One thing that amazed me is that he reported some uneven breast gland growth. What he didn't know is that I'd had gynecomastia (breast bud growth) which I'd been treating with tamoxifen. At the point the MRI scan was done, it was completely reversed (gone) in one breast, but not yet in the other. Only I knew this, but he'd picked it up on the MRI. The other thing (he didn't know) was that my liver didn't like tamoxifen (it caused raised alanine aminotransferase levels in my liver function tests) which would become fatty liver disease if I'd stayed on it a long time. I told him this, and he circled a bit of liver, and the program analysed the fat content by comparing the differently weighted scan images, and reported 8% fat, which was indeed higher than the 5% is should be. (My alanine aminotransferase level is now back to normal, since I stopped needing tamoxifen, and so I hope is my liver fat level.) Anyway, we went through the whole scan in this detail which I found absolutely fascinating.
We didn't actually touch on the prostate much - the whole-body scan is not an mpMRI scan optimised for prostate, so the cancer in the prostate doesn't show well unless you already know where it is. There was a bright white dot in the prostate at the relevant point which I was puzzled about, thinking the cancer can't be that easy to spot. That is apparently a blood clot that failed to be reabsorbed and has since broken down leaving the iron from the hemoglogin behind, which being very magnetic, shows up brightly. It will have been caused by the needle biopsies, not the cancer.
I haven't yet requested my records during treatment (as opposed to diagnosis), but I should do that now I'm finished. That should include something like 25 CT scans from the EBRT, and another 2 CT scans and an MRI scan with all my HDR brachytherapy catheters (needles) in place. I don't need them all, but they don't appear to provide any way to select just some of them.