General Imaging

A PET scan is done after injecting a radioactive drug into your vein.  A PET scan shows the metabolic activity of various tissues and abnormalities throughout the body.   Many…

Extravasation is a commonly used term by radiologists to indicate that blood is going outside a blood vessel.  It is also used in a more general way to denote that…

A common term used by radiologists across all different types of tests is a filling defect.  This means that there is something inside a lumen that prevents normal filling.  A…

Foreign body on X-ray means that the radiologist is seeing something that does not belong in the body.  Foreign body is something that comes from the outside and ends up…

The phrase chronic finding is sometimes used by radiologists to indicate that a finding on an imaging test has been present for some time.  This may mean that a finding…

Your doctor may have ordered your exam stat instead of routine. This means that the test will be done as soon as possible and also read quicker then the routine…

A normal variant on X-ray is an unusual appearance of normal anatomy. The significance of this is that this may mimic abnormality and result in unnecessary testing and treatment. Normal…

Follow up is a very common recommendation by the radiologist on many types of imaging studies. To me, an abnormality that needs follow up is not clearly benign or malignant…

Breast sentinel lymph node injections are commonly done before surgery for breast cancer. The sentinel lymph node injection allows the surgeon to limit the amount of surgery to the sentinel…

I mean when you have an MRI exam and then get a call from the hospital to either repeat part of the exam or the entire study. This happens commonly…

Second opinion for a radiology read is a reasonable request, particularly if the exam is complex or your symptoms don’t match the results.  While radiologists are highly trained specialists, there…