MRI Vs X-Ray Scan Essay

663 Words3 Pages

Diagnostic imaging techniques such as MRI and X-ray scans are both use in medical/clinical settings to help doctors with their diagnosis of a patient 's body. By using these techniques, a more accurate diagnosis of a potential or present injury/ illness of a person can be understood and can be visually determined.

With that being said one major difference in the way that the two techniques obtain their images is the use of radiation. In an X-ray scan the use of gamma radiation helps with being able to obtain an image of an internal structure of the body. Whilst an MRI scan will use magnetic radiation to achieve the same goal.
Therefore X-rays scan are more favourable when it comes to determining bone injuries and MRI scan are favourable …show more content…

Water contains hydrogen and the protons of the hydrogen become aligned whenever there is presence of a magnetic field. The protons of hydrogen spins and return back to their normal state to emit radio pulses from the body. Different parts of the body will have a different proton density, so the radio pulses emitted from the body will be different. This is important factor in helping doctors with their diagnosis and the appearance of the bones and soft tissues because the signal intensity will be higher when the proton density of a tissue is greater. With that being said, in terms of the appearance of bone and soft tissue, is far more detailed when capturing the images and unlike the X-ray scan, the MRI scan is able to image soft tissues. During an MRI scan, it is possible for this technique to be able to change the imaging plane so that the bone and soft tissue are captured from any plane such as 3D plane. This leads to a more clear and widened diagnosis where it is able to show the differences in the appearance of various soft tissues in the body. Furthermore MRI scans will tend to only image a certain section of the body where the problem seems to lie, this will helps with the evaluating the appearance of bones and tissues because it narrows down only the relevant part of the