Camiar Ohadi is not your typical radiologist. Firmly believing in the predictions he shared with Daily Bulletin nearly five years ago, he took “the road less traveled,” striking out on his own to form a one-man practice, supported by fifteen highly trained “team members.”

Although prohibitively expensive, he believed that the 64-slice CAT scan, for example, was a piece of equipment that could not only do wonders for detecting early lung disease, but that its ability to detail the human heart would save thousands from heart disease. And his predictions are now proving true.

Against the norm, Ohadi bought a CAT scan that could do just that while others trailed behind with earlier inferior machinery. Likewise, addressing the fear that claustrophobia patients often suffer with older tubular MRI machinery, he spent to the top of his budget to buy the fastest and most open MRI scanner that both adds a sense of ease to a patient and guarantees that a radiologist will have the most detailed scans for his diagnosis.

“Especially in radiology, we are sometimes only as good as the tools we use,” Dr. Ohadi admits. “And many years ago I heard the ‘pounding of the hooves on the pavement.’ I knew that this was where radiology must go if we are to help our patients in the most responsible way.”

In his office that looks through plate glass onto two serious and diligent “team members” hard at work on their computers, Ohadi has displayed on his computer screen a three-dimensional view of a human heart. He rotates it around and around, naming for us the different parts of the heart.

I start to get a little dizzy and nauseous. It is almost as if he is holding a real heart before us. He circles with his mouse an area he wants to investigate more thoroughly, an aortic valve that shows “calcification and a possible collusion.”

We zoom in as if we are members of the miniature ship in the movie “Fantastic Voyage,” hovering. We then suddenly plummet into the artery, speeding deeper and deeper as its white tunnel–the lumen–grows and shrinks before our eyes.

“Here,” he states, assuredly, “is where the problem is. The white tunnel has turned almost completely gray on the screen. I can only think to myself,  “This is a miracle.”

Dr. Ohadi explains, “An x-ray can only capture a tumor in the lung, for example, after it has grown to a size that it is almost too late to cure. Ohadi’s machinery, however, can catch growths at millimeter sizes, not centimeters, as an x-ray will do.

When asked about the latest trend in full body scans for “the healthy yet cautious man” off the street, Ohadi shies away. “We do offer a full body scan, but we don’t promote it unless it is appropriate.” Responsible medicine once again. There is a detailed screening process that a patient must participate in to understand what might be appropriate or necessary.

And Dr. Ohadi is the ultimate team player. “Radiologists, unlike many other doctors, must be especially careful and exact. Besides wanting to serve my patients well, my livelihood depends on the doctors who refer their patients to me.” He has very little room for error and has proven himself to be deeply trusted by his medical colleagues.

Ohadi insists, a number of times, how important it is to have earlier doctors screen patients for his CAT scans and MRI scans. There is still a risk involved in the procedure. “It is only when the danger of a potential disease outweighs the risk involved that we proceed to the next step.” Do what you need to do only when you need to do it.

Unlike a growing number of private physicians in the medical field, Ohadi is also careful of a patient’s pocketbook. He charges a “fair rate,” and only gives the test a patient truly needs, not a battery of tests that oftentimes, he says “finds nothing and costs thousands.” If a patient does not have the money, his colleagues have informed me–in private–that he waves the fee without hesitancy. But Ohadi is too humble to brag to me about this himself.

However, he does insist that it is important to him that his services be “financially accessible” to all people. He takes a variety of insurances and states intently that “once a patient walks through that door, they are all treated the same–” with honor, care, and dignity.

Dr. Ohadi is also active in sharing his knowledge and expertise with a broader medical community. He teams with Western University to instruct training physicians and holds conferences for local doctors to keep them informed on the latest trends in radiology.

In a world where doctors are pressured more and more to move “the numbers” through their office doors, Dr. Ohadi is a physician who clings to the medical field’s earlier, more idyllic standard of treating each patient as if they matter immensely.