Can Silicone Testicle Implants Be Seen By Airport Scanners?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Apologies if this is a strange question but I will be travelling quite frequently via airport and I just want to consider any issues that may arise. I have a solid silicone elastomer testicle implant. Given this is a solid material is there any chance of this implant could create an anomaly during a body/xray scan? Or even metal detectors? As I know some forms of silicone are metal detectable. I wouldn’t want to be pulled aside for a body search because my implant would be picked up by the body scans.

Kind regards.

A: There are no concerns with having a testicle implant being detected by body scans at the airport. Silicone is an invisible material by radiographic examination. It is non-metallic and is a pure element (#14 on the Periodic Table) of which it is not ‘seen’ by standard x-ray images. It would be detectable by CT and MRI scans but these are not what the airports use for body scanning. Also I know of no forms of silicone that are metal detectable unless they actually contain metal.