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Wednesday 16 September 2015

Varied Types of Medical Imaging



Modern medicine has seen medical imaging go through multiple advancements. The information related to human body really helps in diverse clinical applications. Numerous kinds of medical imaging techniques have broken the surface over all these years, with each of these having their own special features and some disadvantages too.
There are varied methods based on x-ray that fulfill the purpose of conducting medical imaging, which may include conventional or plain x-ray, mammography and computed tomography (CT). Sometimes, contrast agents are brought into use to bring enhancement in x-ray images such as in angiography examinations.
Nuclear medicine utilizes molecular imaging, which includes usage of varied techniques to envisage biological processes that occur in different organisms' cells. Radiopharmaceuticals i.e. little radioactive marker amounts are brought into use for carrying out molecular imaging.
This, however, is not the limit. Some other kinds of medical imaging may comprise ultrasound imaging and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI and ultrasound differ from the previous kinds of imaging methods, since they work without ionizing radiation.
While strong magnetic fields are used in MRI and no irreversible biological effects are seen in the patient, high-frequency sound waves are used in ultrasound and images of soft tissues as well as internal parts of the body are obtained.
Let's learn about different kinds of medical imaging
  • Plain X-rays
In this procedure, a beam of x-ray is used to be projected on the patient's body. Some parts of radition get absorbed while they penetrate the body of the patient. The others get detected on the other side of the body. These rays produce an x-ray image.
  • Molecular Imaging
With molecular imaging, it becomes easy to get detailed information about different biological processes that occur at cellular or molecular levels in the body. They may even hint to any disease developing inside the body at an early stage.
These diseases may be detected even before a CT or MR image could display them. In case molecular imaging was not there, these diseases would need a biopsy or surgery to be detected at an early stage. A biopsy indicates tissue removal so that the test could be conducted under the microscope. Brain or bone disorders along with heart and kidney ailments, gastrointestinal disorders, lung disorder and cancer are often diagnosed using molecular imaging.
  • Other Medical Imaging Techniques
Among the other kinds of medical imaging techniques may come those that operate without any use of ionizing radiation. For an instance, ultrasound imaging or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may largely help in diagnosing different diseases.

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