Radiology is one of the clinical subject where diagnosis and treatment of diseases are practiced using radial rays, and the most common radial ray is X-ray, which was found by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a physicist in Germany, in 1895. The X-ray has been applied to various medical examinations up to the present.
Using the difference of the absorption ratio about various materials and human organs when the X-ray permeates through human body, we can check the internal structure of human body and diagnose some diseases. The chest X-ray examination and bone X-ray examination are very common. When there is very small absorption ratio in the target organ and it is difficult to get useful image for diagnosis by simple X-ray examination, we can get good images with clear contrast using the contrast medium such as Barium meal as positive contrast medium and air as negative contrast medium, or injecting the contrast medium into vessels. The gastro-intestinal Barium examination about esopahgus, stomach, small intestine and colon is very common. The fiberscopy has become the usual examination recently, but the Barium method has some advantage compared with the fiberscopy. For example, the scirrhous type gastric cancer can be diagnosed more easily by Barium method than by fiberscopy. We should chose the most effective examination method accoding to the symptoms of the patient. X-CT is also common recently.
There are another radiological examination such as the radio-isotope examination (nuclear medicine) using gamma-ray of radioisotopes. The ultrasound examination, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron-emission transaxial tomography) are used for detail diagnosis recently. Radiological diagnosis is called the image diagnosis because not only X-ray but various imaging methods are used. The main subject of department of Radiology is the image diagnosis using various imaging methods. The image diagnosis is used at other clinical department such as the internal medicine and surgery, but the radiologist is a specialist of this image diagnosis (of course there are radiologists whose specialities are radio-therapy and nuclear medicine). Board certified radiologists are the specialist and they always consider the real necessity of the examination, the side-effect including the influence of the X-ray on human body and complications at the examination. Dr. Hidenori Murakami is a board certified radiologist.
You can undergo
the usual X-ray examination except X-CT and MRI at Murakami clinic,
but we have the affiliated hospital where we can ask these examinations
soon. Dr Hidenori Murakami is a Board Certified Radiologist
of Japan Radiological Society.