Medical imaging has brought the healthcare industry a long way. The very first MRI that was successful was performed on a live human being was on July 3, 1977. Since then medical imaging has become vital in terms of patient healthcare. A medical imaging center can help with disease prevention, diagnosis, early detection and treatments for many ailments.
Diagnostic imaging is a term referring to the various way a physician can look inside the human body to search for potential problems. The goal is to detect health problems before you experience negative symptoms. A medical imaging center is equipped with trained specialists and imaging equipment that can perform many tests and monitor existing health conditions, investigate certain concerns and symptoms or pin-point a diagnosis. The results are what help your physician draw conclusions that help them give the right treatments.
What Is Medical Imaging?
Medical imaging is like a medical scan and there are many different types available at a medical imaging center. It is a non-invasive way for radiologists, as well as other specially trailed personnel in the medical field, to look inside your body. It refers to many different technologies and can be used to study various areas of your body so an ailment, injury or disease can be diagnosed and treated. Different types of diagnostic imaging are available at a medical imaging center and include ultrasound imaging, MRI imaging, pediatric x-ray imaging and medical x-ray imaging.
How Are Diagnostic Imaging Machines Used?
There are several types of imaging machines that can either be used by themselves or with other imaging machines at a medical imaging center. It all just depends on a patient’s needs. X-ray machines use radiation when forming images. It allows solid tissue to be seen as whiter images, such as bone. That’s why bones are white in x-rays. It gives your doctor the chance to examine your skeletal system, any objects in your body, and to detect issues such as certain types of cancer and pneumonia.
Mammograms are used at a women’s health center and use a form of lower-dose x-rays to provide an image of the female breast. It helps doctors find suspicious tissue formations that could indicate the presence of breast cancer. Ultrasounds that use sound waves at high-frequencies also provide images of what is going inside the human body. It is used most predominantly in a maternity clinic, but can also be used to look at the heart and blood vessels, to search for cysts and to view your liver, kidneys as well as other organs.
A CT scan offers cross-sectional images of the human body taking an x-ray at different angles using computers to fit them all together. This type of scan is used to look at your skeleton to check for cancer, blood clots, signs of heart disease or internal bleeding.
Have you ever had a positron emission tomography scan? A PET scan is often used with a CT scan and focuses more on the chemical activity in softer tissue. This type of scan uses a tracer which is a mildly radioactive drug that makes it possible to see how tissues are functioning.
An MRI machine, or magnetic resonance imaging machine, uses radio waves and a large magnet to view internal structures and organs. It has been used to diagnose a wide variety of conditions, from ligaments to tumors. It is most often used to view the spinal cord and brain.
Medical imaging centers use diagnostic imaging to perform and plan procedures that are minimally invasive. Many medical treatments such as the direction of radiation at cancer, the placement of stents and biopsies are treatments that all use diagnostic imaging. Trained staff, radiologists and specialized physicians understand how to use diagnostic imaging technology so you get the correct diagnosis much faster.