Nearly everyone has at sometime in their life had an x-ray taken, whether at the dentist as part of a routine dental exam or to check for broken bones after a fall or a childhood accident. It is the oldest of all medical imaging technologies, having been discovered more than 100 years ago.

X-ray imaging or radiography was first used to image bones and today it is still one of the most widely used applications. It has since been found useful for detecting some diseases in soft tissue, such as chest x-rays for diagnosing pneumonia and lung cancer and abdominal x-rays for detecting kidney stones and gallstones. Recent advances in x-ray technology have introduced digital x-rays. Unlike conventional x-ray machines that produce the results on film, the black and white images captured by digital x-ray machines are instantaneously processed by a computer and remain electronic images for viewing on a monitor.