Conventional radiography

[Becky]

Conventional radiography involves the use of x-rays; the term “plain x-rays” is sometimes used to distinguish x-rays used alone from x-rays combined with other techniques (eg, CT).
For conventional radiography, an x-ray beam is generated and passed through a patient to a piece of film or a radiation detector, producing an image. Different soft tissues attenuate x-ray photons differently, depending on tissue density; the denser the tissue, the whiter (more radiopaque) the image. The range of densities, from most to least dense, is represented by metal (white, or radiopaque), bone cortex (less white), muscle and fluid (gray), fat (darker gray), and air or gas (black, or radiolucent).