Radiography has many uses in the field of health care.
Medical radiography and photography involve the use of ionizing electromagnetic radiation to view parts of the body. Health care professionals perform more than 300 million radiological procedures, such as X-rays and angiographies, annually in the United States.
Purposes
Medical radiography serves primarily as a diagnostic tool to identify medical conditions not visible by conventional means, such as broken bones and arthritis. Physicians and radiologists also use radiography to detect foreign matter and abnormalities inside the body, as in a mammography, and dentists use X-rays to examine teeth and gums.
Types
Health care personnel use several types of radiographic procedures depending on the condition. For example, a fluoroscopy produces images of soft tissue and internal organs, computer tomography (CT) scans provide cross-section viewing of internal organs, and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry measures bone density.
Modalities
Medical radiography also includes types of medical imaging modalities not technically considered radiographic, such as ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the use of radiopharmaceuticals in nuclear medicine.
Tags: Medical radiography, Health care, internal organs
