On January 17, 2023, Dr. Gupta, a local radiologist, came and spoke to our class about her career in Radiology and medical imaging. She first started with an X-Ray of a child's body, which can be read by the growth plates and their size.
Radiologists are medical doctors that specialize in diagnosing injuries and diseases using medical imaging, such as x-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, nuclear medicine, PET scans, and ultrasounds. This career involves at least 13 years of training, including medical school, a five year residency, and an additional 1-2 year fellowship of very specialized training, such as pediatric radiology, musculoskeletal imaging, or nuclear medicine.
Dr. Gupta then went into detail on the specialties in radiology and even gave us some fun facts surrounding radiology such as the Beatles album, "Abbey Road," having a great deal of influence on the creation and funding of the first CT scanner. There are different types of medical imaging and they are usually grouped from using x-rays and not. X-ray procedures consist of plain radiography, fluoroscopy, and CT scans. Ultrasounds use high frequency sound waves instead of radiation. Magnetic resonance imaging, better known as an MRI, uses magnetic field to align atomic nuclei. Nuclear Medicine, which Dr. Gupta happens to specialize in, injects radioactive pacer into the body and uses image to see the distribution, PET scans can be done to look for cancer.
It was very interesting to hear Dr. Gupta talk about her career and the various types of radiology that exist and how this medical imaging can help save lives such as detect cancer and help diagnose treatment plans.
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