X-rays... Broken bones, intestinal obstructions, bladder stones, things like that. Those are what I think... Dentistry. Those are where I think that X-rays, they serve their purpose. They've been around forever, not forever, but I mean, they've been around a very long time, but they serve their purpose. They work very well for that, and they're much more cost-effective. So things like that. That's what I'm reaching for first.

If I need to look at a soft tissue structure and I need to see the internal components of said soft tissue structure, then I'm grabbing my ultrasound. It allows you to look at the internal components of the bladder, the kidneys, the liver. I can see the vasculature and the blood flow and the drainage in everything from the liver to the heart, and I can see the heart valves. I can actively see the heart contracting and watch the heart valves fluttering and closing with an ultrasound. So it's perfect for that kind of study.

MRIs and CT scans are more advanced. You need much more acute detail. We've all seen medical shows on TV. What does an MRI or CT scan look like? It's a hundred little slices. You see their films on the wall and it’s got all these tiny images, not tiny images, or small squares on these great big films. That machine will hypothetically take hundreds of slices as it goes through the tissues and it lays them down and puts them on a film.

Say you’ve got a brain tumor. You're looking at a soft tissue structure that's encased in bone. I can't see that on an X-ray. My X-ray is going to pick up that bone. It's going to be bright white, but I can't see the soft tissue of the brain underneath. Ultrasound cannot penetrate the bone. So that's useless to try to see that. You need something that can actually take those slices, if you will, of tissue, and then be able to look at them this way. You'll see the bone, but you'll also see all the soft tissue encased underneath. And you can literally say, "Okay, this is at one millimeter, two millimeters." It's probably smaller than that, but you can literally break it down and have a sequential step. So you can see exactly where a growth or a mass or any kind of a lesion starts and stops based on that.

Lastly, too, I know MRI is pretty superior when you're looking at ligament. Let’s say you have a torn cruciate or a torn meniscus and for whatever reason; my mind is stuck on knees right now. But if you have some sort of a soft tissue structure, an orthopedic soft tissue structure, MRI is really hard to beat if you need that kind of acuity to see if something is torn or partially torn. No other study can touch that kind of accuracy that you get with MRI on that.

There again, it depends on what you're looking for. I hate to be vague, but it's true. That's a tough one to answer with just a black and white answer. They're all pretty good in their own right. You have a broken bone, don't ultrasound it. Start with an X-ray. And if you need more detail, then a CT scan would probably be next. Again, you also have to keep in mind in the real world, a CT scan is not available at your neighborhood veterinary clinic. So usually CT scans and MRIs are reserved for cases where you can't get an answer with ultrasound, X-rays, blood work, and you've exhausted all other diagnostic abilities. In those cases, you may have to refer that cat to a teaching hospital or a referral center or something like that, where they have specialists. And they are the ones that would typically have some of those advanced modalities. So it's hard to say which one is more accurate just as black and white as that question implies.

As the name somewhat implies, diagnostic imaging provides images that are used to help us attain a diagnosis. It's as simple as that. So what do they entail? The most common are X-rays, radiographs if you will, ultrasound, and then some of the more advanced modalities would be things like MRI or CT scans. So how do you determine which one is the most applicable or the most useful in a situation? It varies tremendously on how the animal presents. If you're looking at bones, then most of the time a simple X-ray is going to be fine. And I say a simple X-ray just because they're very common. They're readily available at almost any veterinary clinic. If you need to look at the internal structure of the liver or the spleen or something like that, X-rays are probably not the best one for that. You're going to want something like an ultrasound that can actually see what the integrity of the internal components of that organ looks like. So that would be a case where maybe ultrasound might be more applicable. So rather than go through every device or every situation one by one, it really depends on what the presenting complaints or signs are that will dictate what type of imaging is best used.

I'd love to answer that, yes, but unfortunately, the answer is no. Why? Because it's not a tracking device. If the cat shows up at somebody else's house and they say, "Oh, look at this cute little kitty," and they just take him, it doesn’t mean they're bad people. But if they never take the cat to a vet or a shelter, they have no way to know that the cat belonged to someone else before. Unfortunately, microchipping doesn't guarantee you'll get the cat back, but I would certainly say that it will increase the odds that you will get them back.

Most veterinarians nowadays have that. The technology's changed a lot in the 20 or so years. When microchipping was first invented, whatever brand of chip was implanted, you'd have to have their scanner to detect it. So you could have a scanner for brand A, and that cat was microchipped with brand B, and it wasn’t going to pick it up. Thankfully, it's not like that anymore. Now, they have universal scanners that can detect any make and model of chip, making it quick and easy to identify.