Computerized Axial Tomography, CAT, or Computed Tomography, CT Terms +

A medical operation in which a doctor cuts open a person's body for the treatment of disease, injuries, or deformities: Surgery is the branch of medicine concerned with diseases and conditions which require or are amenable to operative procedures done by one or more surgeons.

A radiograph (x-ray) of a selected layer of the body made by tomography: A tomogram is a two-dimensional image representing a slice or section of the body through a three-dimensional object.

The term tomogram may be more specific; for example, a nephrotomogram (tomogram of the kidney).

A process that produces a tomogram, a two-dimensional image of a slice or section through a three-dimensional object: Tomography achieves this result by simply moving an x-ray source in one direction as the x-ray film is moved in the opposite direction during the exposure to sharpen structures in the focal plane, while structures in other planes appear blurred.

The tomogram is the picture; the tomograph is the apparatus; and tomography is the process.

The degree to which a substance or poison can harm humans or animals: If the amount of a drug in a person's body is too high, toxicity might take place and cause dangerous or negative effects.

Any injury to the body, whether physically or emotionally inflicted: Trauma has both a medical and a psychiatric definition. Medically, trauma refers to a serious or critical bodily injury, wound, or shock.

This definition is often associated with trauma medicine practiced in emergency rooms and represents a popular view of the term.

In psychiatry, trauma has assumed a different meaning and refers to an experience that is emotionally painful, distressful, or shocking, and which often results in long-term mental and physical effects.

A period or phase of three months, or about three months: The nine months of pregnancy which is traditionally divided into three trimesters or distinct periods of roughly three months in which different stages of fetal development progress.

High-frequency sound waves which can be bounced off body tissues using special devices during which echoes are converted into a picture called a sonogram: Ultrasound imaging, referred to as ultrasonography, allows physicians and patients to get an inside view of soft tissues and body cavities, without using invasive techniques.

Ultrasound is often used to examine a fetus during pregnancy and so far there is no convincing evidence for any danger from ultrasound during pregnancy.

A womb that is a hollow, pear-shaped organ located in a woman's lower abdomen between the bladder and the rectum: The uterus is a reproductive organ in a woman's body where a baby can be conceived and can develop before giving birth.

The narrow, lower portion of the uterus is the cervix; the broader, upper part is the corpus which consists up two layers of tissue.

A blood vessel that carries blood low in oxygen content from the body back to the heart: The deoxygenated form of hemoglobin (deoxyhemoglobin) in venous blood makes it appear dark and the veins are part of the afferent wing of the circulatory system which returns blood to the heart.

One of the small circular boney segments that shape the spine of a person't body or of an animal: Mike had a very bad car accident which injured his back very seriously and damaged a vertebra which resulted in him having great pain and some spinal damage.

Electromagnetic radiation image: A roentgenogram is used in diagnostic imaging to view shadows of tissue density in the body.

High-energy radiation with waves shorter than those of visible light: X-rays possess the capabilities of penetrating most substances (to varying extents), of acting on a photographic film or plate (permitting radiography), and of causing a fluorescent screen to give off light (permitting fluoroscopy).

Formerly called a Roentgen ray, in low doses X-rays are used for making images that help to diagnose disease, and in high doses to treat cancer.