If you’ve ever been treated at a hospital, or watched a hospital show on TV, you have probably heard of x-ray or radiography. X-ray is the most commonly used term in medicine, and doctors use it every day to diagnose all kinds of problems. If you are yet to get an x-ray, you may be wondering what that is.

Well, an x-ray is a type of radiation otherwise known as electromagnetic waves. In layman’s terms, x-rays are like light waves that can penetrate through a person’s body to take an image of their insides, said John O.

Think of it as a camera that can see and take pictures through your skin and deep into your body. Doctors and veterinarians use medical x-rays to see the inside of a patient’s body without making an incision. This helps them diagnose and treat many medical issues.

How Does a Medical X-ray Work?

The image taken by an X-ray machine is known as a radiograph. To create a radiograph, you have to position the part of the body being imaged between an x-ray source and an x-ray detector. When you turn on the machine, the electromagnetic waves travel through the body and are absorbed differently by different tissues depending on the tissue density.

For example, bones have a higher atomic density than most tissues in the body because of calcium and hence absorbs more light. In a radiograph, bone structures appear white against the black background of the picture. Conversely, x-ray waves travel more easily through less dense tissues like fat and muscles, so these structures present in shades of grey on the radiograph.

Who Invented the X-ray Machine?

The history of x-rays goes back to 1895 when Wilhelm Roentgen, a Professor of Physics in Wurzburg, Bavaria, discovered the strange light by accident. The good professor was testing whether cathode rays can pass through glass. However, his cathode glass was covered in black paper, so it was a shock when a green light escaped and projected onto a fluorescent screen across.

Through more research and experimentation, Wilhelm found out that the mysterious light could pass through most objects, including human tissue, rendering everything inside visible. Because he didn’t know what that light was, Roentgen called it X, commonly used to mean ‘unknown’, rays.

News of that discovery quickly spread, and within a year, doctors all over Europe and the United States were using x-rays to locate bone fractures, gunshots, kidney stones, and swallowed objects. This led to Roentgen winning the first Nobel Prize in 1901.

Unfortunately, the use of x-rays in the early days was reckless and unregulated, meaning people may have been exposed to harmful radiation. In the 1930s and 40s, shoe stores offered their customers free x-rays to see the bones in their feet as a marketing gamic. Luckily, today scientists have a better understanding of electromagnetic rays and use less than harmful amounts of radiation to take images. Additionally, radiation protection products such as an x ray thyroid shield have also been invented since then to provide an appropriate level of protection for both patients and medical staff.

What is the Application of the X-ray Machine?

Since x-ray was discovered in 1895, the scientific community has put these magnetic waves into good use. Some common uses include airport security to scan baggage and do a body search, look for cracks in oil pipelines, and analyze art to determine if it’s real or counterfeit. However, the field of medicine is where x-rays are mostly used to analyze and diagnose different issues inside the body. Among these uses include broken bones resulting from accidents or osteoporosis, chest x-rays, tooth x-rays, barium enema, among others.

X-rays are also used for industrial purposes. For example, industrial radiography of whole engines and engine parts are taken to look for defects and degradation instead of undoing the entire engine. This method is known as non-destructive testing (NDT radiographic testing), where you use an industry CT scanner to get a cross-sectional and 3d image of the object you are inspecting.

Because engines and most equipment is made of metal parts joined together, a radiography test for welding is used to check for any discontinuities or defects without destroying them. It’s a safe quality testing method to ensure the ships, cars, airplanes, bridges, buildings, roads, and other equipment are safe to use.

Conclusion

The use of x-ray, whether it’s for medical purposes, security checks, or quality checks using industrial x-ray machines, has made it so easy for scientists to discover hidden issues without destroying the object in question.

UNI X-ray, the national high-tech x-ray machine supplier, has developed its real-time x-ray imaging inspection equipment to inspect a vast range of automotive parts. The x-ray machine boasts a high resolution, high definition image quality, equipped with automatic defect identification, and automatic judgment function. The entire x-ray automotive system can meet the production beat of most enterprises.

With the pace of technological advancements, x-ray inspection technology is also being continuously improved to provide safer and more efficient non-destructive inspection equipment for varied industries.