Radiography: Film records (radiographs) of internal structures of the body. Radiography is made possible by X-rays (or gamma rays) passing through the body to act on a specially sensitized film.

Radiography is used for both medical and industrial applications (see medical radiography and industrial radiography). If the object being examined is living, whether human or animal, it is regarded as medical; all other radiography is regarded as industrial radiographic work.

Radiography started in 1895 with the discovery of X-rays, also referred to as Röntgen rays after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen who first described their properties in rigorous detail. These previously unknown rays (hence the X) were found to be a type of electromagnetic radiation. It wasn’t long before X-rays were used in various applications, from helping to fit shoes, to the medical uses that have persisted. X-rays were put to diagnostic use very early, before the dangers of ionizing radiation were discovered. Initially, many kinds of staff conducted radiography in hospitals, including physicists, photographers, doctors, nurses, and engineers. The medical specialty of radiology grew up over many years around the new technology. When new diagnostic tests involving X-rays were developed, it was natural for the radiographers to be trained in and to adopt this new technology. This happened first with fluoroscopy, computed tomography (1970s), mammography, ultrasound (1970s), and magnetic resonance imaging (1980s). Although a nonspecialist dictionary might define radiography quite narrowly as “taking X-ray images”, this has long been only part of the work of “X-ray departments”, radiographers, and radiologists.

Radiography is the use of X-rays to view unseen or hard-to-image objects. The main diagnostic purposes of X-rays are to see inside ones’ body, especially of the brain and fetus, where the bones can be viewed at an optimum resolution (128 shades of grey). The impact on society of this technique has also been immense. Physicists and researchers have developed numerous types of medicines to assist in the function and development of organs such as the brain and heart, and radiography has improved the economy of most countries in the western world due to the employment of physicists and doctors.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Radiography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.