Test, Imaging and Diagnosis Terms
Laboratory tests, scans, examinations, screening methods, and diagnostic concepts. Browse definitions and meanings below.
How diagnostic terms fit together
Diagnostic vocabulary covers both the procedures that gather information and the words used to judge how trustworthy that information is. Imaging methods differ in what they show: some are best for bone, others for soft tissue, and others for how actively tissue is working.
Screening and diagnostic testing are not the same thing. Screening looks for a condition before symptoms appear, in people not known to have it, while a diagnostic test is used to confirm or rule out a suspected condition.
Terms in this topic
Alphabetical order-
An abdominal ultrasound uses sound waves to create real time images of organs inside the abdomen for evaluation of pain or suspected disease.
-
A quick plain film of the belly that is read mainly from the pattern of gas rather than from the organs themselves.
-
A procedure in which cells are scraped from the lining of the anus (the opening of the rectum to the outside of the body) and looked at under a microscope.
-
A procedure in which cells are scraped from the lining of the anus (the opening of the rectum to the outside of the body) and looked at under a microscope.
-
The extra stain, antibody panel or gene test that turns an inconclusive slide into a named diagnosis.
-
The picture shows the space inside a vessel rather than its wall, so it maps the channel that blood actually has left to travel through.
-
A laboratory test to identify antibodies that can bind to the surface of red blood cells or platelets and destroy them.
-
An X-ray study that makes arteries appear by filling them with a liquid the beam cannot pass through.
-
Behind almost every number on a laboratory report sits an assay, a method built to pick one substance out of a complicated mixture.
-
auscultation
/ aw-skul-TAY-shun /Listening to sounds produced within the body, usually with a stethoscope.
-
A shared vocabulary and a numbered ending for breast imaging reports, built so the same words mean the same thing everywhere.
-
Tissue removed from the body and examined under a microscope to determine whether disease is present.
-
One of the most frequently ordered blood tests, counting three separate cell lines at once and pointing in many different directions.
-
The number a bone scan produces, describing how much mineral is packed into a measured slice of the skeleton.
-
An imaging test that measures bone density (the amount of bone mineral contained in a certain volume of bone) by passing x-rays with two different energy levels through the bone.
-
A procedure in which a small sample of bone with bone marrow inside it is removed, usually from the hip bone.
-
An imaging test that measures bone density (the amount of bone mineral contained in a certain volume of bone) by passing x-rays with two different energy levels through the bone.
-
An imaging test that maps repair activity across the whole skeleton in one pass, often long before an x-ray shows anything.
-
A description of what a mammogram shows rather than of how a breast feels, and it cannot be judged by touch.
-
A method used to examine the lining of the breast ducts to look for abnormal tissue.