Test, Imaging and Diagnosis Terms

The abbreviation is also written DXA, and the two forms name the same low-dose x-ray method for measuring bone mineral density.

Ordered when fracture risk is in question, the test takes minutes, needs no injection, and uses a very small radiation dose.

Seldom a single moment, a diagnosis is usually narrowed from a list of candidates and can stay provisional for a long time.

A diagnostic mammogram is a focused breast x-ray obtained to evaluate a specific finding, distinct from a routine screening mammogram in an asymptomatic person.

A specific test or series of steps done to help diagnose a disease or condition.

A type of method or test used to help diagnose a disease or condition.

A research study that evaluates methods of detecting disease.

A number only means something when the next one is taken the same way, on the same machine, in the same plane.

Capturing images on a sensor instead of film, which is what made routine clinical photography and remote review practical.

Digital here means finger rather than electronic, and the reach of that finger is the main limitation of the whole examination.

The standard bone density scan, and one that reports mineral spread across an area rather than through a true volume.

A quick low-dose scan that turns bone strength into a single comparable number, and the measurement osteoporosis is defined by.

Ten electrodes produce twelve views of the same heartbeat, each looking at the heart from a different direction.

The number most often quoted from the study is ejection fraction, the share of blood the left ventricle pushes out with each beat.

One of the few tests that watches the brain working moment by moment instead of photographing its structure.

Quick, painless and available almost anywhere, it is usually the first test reached for when the heart is the question.

A recording of the heart’s electrical activity from electrodes on the skin.

The fact that decides everything is whether a wave carries enough energy to knock electrons out of atoms, making it ionizing.

A procedure in which a sample of tissue is taken from the endometrium (inner lining of the uterus) for examination under a microscope.

A procedure in which a probe that sends out high-energy sound waves is inserted into the rectum.