Read Your Scan

How we write the Learn pages

Last updated

Health content should say who wrote it, what it is built from, and where it stops. This page says all three, including the part that is not flattering.

Who writes these pages

The Read Your Scan editorial team, working from the published references listed below. A licensed physician does not write or sign them, and we do not put a doctor’s name on a page they did not review. If that changes, this page will say so and the reviewer’s name and credentials will appear on each page they signed.

We say this plainly because the alternative — a plausible-sounding medical byline nobody can verify — is common in this corner of the internet and is worth less than an honest disclosure. What we can offer is accurate, sourced, plain-language explanation of the document you are holding, and a clear boundary around what it is not.

What we hold ourselves to

We explain what a report says, never what your scan shows

Every page in this section describes vocabulary, structure and what a radiologist is looking at. None of them tells a reader what their own images mean, and none is written to be used in place of the clinician who ordered the scan. That line is the whole editorial standard, and where a draft crosses it, the draft changes.

No numbers that would change a decision

We do not publish thresholds, size cut-offs, grading values or dosing figures that someone might act on directly. Where a published framework exists — the Fleischner Society criteria for incidental lung nodules, for example — we name it and say what it is for, and we send the reader to the clinician who applies it rather than reproducing the table.

Descriptions, not diagnoses

Radiology vocabulary describes appearance. Ground-glass opacity, hyperintensity and disc bulge are patterns, not conditions, and our pages say so explicitly wherever the distinction matters. This is also the most common misreading of a report, so it is repeated rather than assumed.

The uncomfortable facts stay in

Degenerative findings are near-universal with age. Imaging and symptoms disagree constantly. Competent radiologists differ on borderline findings. Long waits usually mean low priority rather than bad news. These are the things that actually reduce a reader’s anxiety, and leaving them out to keep a page tidy would make it less useful, not more.

How a page gets written

  1. 1.It starts from a real question

    Topics come from two places: the vocabulary in radiology reports our own users bring us, and the questions people actually type into search. We do not publish a page because a keyword exists; we publish one when the question has no straight answer anywhere a patient would find it.

  2. 2.It is drafted against named sources

    Every page is written from the references listed at the bottom of it — patient-facing material from radiological societies and national health services, and the published frameworks radiologists cite in reports. Those links are on the page so a reader can check us.

  3. 3.It is edited for the reader in the worst state

    The assumed reader has a report in front of them, no appointment until next week, and is frightened. Sentences that are technically accurate but read as a verdict get rewritten. Reassurance that is not true does not get written at all.

  4. 4.It is dated, and the date is real

    Each page shows when it was last updated, and that date changes only when the content changes. A page that has not been revised does not claim to have been.

  5. 5.It gets corrected when it is wrong

    If you find an error — clinical, factual or a sentence that misleads — tell us and we will fix it or take the page down. That includes radiologists and clinicians, whose corrections we would rather have than not.

What we will not publish

  • Anything that reads as a diagnosis, a prognosis, or advice about your specific images.
  • Treatment recommendations, drug advice, or guidance on whether to have a procedure.
  • Reassurance we cannot support. “This is probably nothing” is not a sentence we are in a position to write about anybody’s scan.
  • Statistics presented as if they applied to the individual reader.
  • A physician byline on a page no physician reviewed.

The references this section is built from

  1. Patient-facing procedure descriptions (MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound)RadiologyInfo.org — Radiological Society of North America & American College of Radiology
  2. MRI scan — overview, how it is performed and resultsNHS (United Kingdom)
  3. CT scan — overview, how it is performed and resultsNHS (United Kingdom)
  4. ACR Appropriateness Criteria and practice parameters for reportingAmerican College of Radiology
  5. Guidelines for Management of Incidental Pulmonary Nodules Detected on CT ImagesFleischner Society, via Radiology (RSNA)
  6. Medical imaging and radiation dose information for patientsU.S. Food & Drug Administration
  7. Computed tomography (CT) scans and cancerNational Cancer Institute
  8. ACR Manual on Contrast MediaAmerican College of Radiology

The AI part, stated separately

Read Your Scan also sells an AI reading of your images and a plain-language mapping of your radiologist’s report. That is a product, it is separate from these pages, and how it works — which models, what they are and are not good at, and where they have been measured — is documented on the methodology page. Nothing in this section is generated by that pipeline, and nothing in this section is a substitute for a radiologist.

Tell us we are wrong

Corrections, clinical objections and “this sentence frightened me for no reason” all go to the same place. Contact us and say which page.

Read Your Scan is informational only — not a medical diagnosis, and not a substitute for a licensed radiologist or your doctor. If you have urgent symptoms, seek care.