are there any alternative tachniques for making good diagnoses other than using x-rays, which when used often have an ionising effect. Ultrasound (US) and MRI are going to be your two primary non-ionizing imaging modalities... Both x-ray and CT imaging are excellent diagnostic tools, but both use x-ray photons and, as you know, cause ionization. The key issue is risk versus benefit... MRI, well exceptional at imaging soft tissues, is going to be extremely expensive and time consuming when completing a primary check of the lung field for, say, pneumonia, pneumothorax, or etc. With MRI you're using a large number of planar slices to view the field in question, whereas with x-ray you're using generally just two or three images to view the same region.... and the amount of radiation in one x-ray chest series doesn't outweigh its cost-effectiveness or reliability. Ultrasound is useful in dynamic imaging of the heart, the vascular system, and the abdominopelvic region (as well as other regions), but again... the amount of detail you get with one radiograph outweighs the negatives. It depends on what the problem is. Each modality is good for different things. Some things can best be seen with ultrasound, some with CT, etc. |
