Question: What type of x-rays do you do?

Clare Devery answered on 18 Mar 2015:

Well I actually work with MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) which is a type of imaging that doesn’t use any x-rays at all! That’s one of the main advantages of MRI as an imaging modality – there is no ionising radiation involved.

There are many types of x-rays used in radiology departments of hospitals though. A standard x-ray machine can produce good images of the skeletal system. Mammography units use a lower energy x-ray beam to image breast tissue. CT (computed tomography) uses x-rays to image a ‘slice’ of the body – this is done by rotating the x-ray beam the full way around the patient and then processing the images to get a 3D picture of the imaged section of the body. Fluoroscopy is an imaging technique that uses x-rays to get a real-time moving image of an internal structure. So as you can see x-rays are used in many forms! They are very useful for medical imaging, but we need to remember that there are some side effects associated with ionising radiation, so we need to try to always keep our dose to the minimum!