Testing: Computer (Assisted) Tomography (CT)

Computerized Tomography (CT) machines use a series of X-rays to view the insides of a patient’s body. The images show cross-sectional slices of your body, as if you were looking down through the body from the top of your head. These cross-sections represent a very thin layer of your body, and there are hundreds of “slices” per scan, so doctors can examine your internal organs very thoroughly.

The CT scanner itself is composed of a moving table, on which the patient lies, and a spinning X-ray machine. The portion that spins takes the images and transfers them to a computer for a technician to view and analyze.

In some cases, the doctors want to enhance the images. They accomplish this by injecting patients with a “contrast” agent, or dye, such as iodine. This will “dye” your organs or blood vessels so that doctors can see them clearly on the scan output. The dyes have generally mild symptoms. For instance, the iodine may make a patient feel very warm when it is injected, but the feeling goes away shortly after the scan.

If you’ve had any adverse reactions to iodine in the past, you should alert your physician prior to the scan. If you feel unusual after the contrast is injected, please alert the health care professionals monitoring your scan and they will take care of you.

Pregnant women should not have a CT scan, as the X-rays could damage the baby.

Why use a CT Scan?

CT scans are better at viewing bones than other scanning technologies, such as MRI.

Similar Tests

MRI scans, gallium scans, and PET scans all provide similar data for the diagnosis of cancer.

Photo by Braegel

More Articles

More Articles

Amazon.com is pleased to have the Lymphoma Information Network in the family of Amazon.com associates. We've agreed to ship items...

The question ought to be what are myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), since this is a group of similar blood and bone marrow diseases that...

Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) is a very rare and aggressive skin cancer that usually develops when a person is in his or her 70s. It is...

Radiation Therapy Topics

...

At some point, the Seattle biotech company Cell Therapeutics Inc (CTI) should earn an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for utter and...

Site Beginnings

This site was started as Lymphoma Resource Page(s) in 1994. The site was designed to collect lymphoma...

Three papers appearing in the journal Blood and pointing towards a regulator-suppressor pill could offer hope to blood cancer...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted a third so-called Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the investigational oral...

The US Food and Drug Administration today has approved an expanded use of Imbruvica (ibrutinib) in patients with...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that it has granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation" for the investigational agent...

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of California, San...

Pharmacyclics has announced that the company has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for...

New research suggests that frontline radioimmunotherapy...

Gilead Sciences has announced results of the company's Phase II study of its investigational compound idelalisib, an oral inhibitor of...

Sitemap