The publication
About Inside the Scanner
One subject, one method, and a source named beside every figure. Inside the Scanner explains how imaging examinations are requested, carried out and reported in the UK.
Inside the Scanner explains what happens when a picture is taken of the inside of a living body. It covers the five methods a British reader is most likely to meet, which are plain radiography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound and nuclear medicine; the way an examination is requested, carried out and reported; the rules that govern the use of radiation in healthcare; and the people who do the work.
What a page contains
A page describes a method and a procedure: what the machine does, what the room looks like, how long the examination usually takes, what the person carrying it out is trained to do, and what happens to the pictures afterwards. It stays on published, general ground, the ground a reader can check for themselves against the sources named beside each statement. Questions that turn on one person, their symptoms and their history belong to the clinician who knows them.
Pages carry explanation and nothing operational: no prices, no waiting times, no clinic names, no practitioner names, no contact routes. The subject here is the examination itself, not any place where it is performed.
How a page is written
Every statement of fact on this site is written from a primary source that has been read: the NHS website, the Royal College of Radiologists, the UK Health Security Agency, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the Health and Care Professions Council, the Society of Radiographers, the Care Quality Commission, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or the regulations themselves on legislation.gov.uk. The source is named in the text, next to the thing it supports, rather than gathered into a list at the bottom where nobody can tell which sentence it belongs to.
A figure appears on a page only when it has been read at its source and the date of that reading recorded. Where a number is not published by a primary source, the page says so instead of estimating one. The whole procedure, including how a correction is made and dated, is set out in sources and method.
Who writes it
Pages are written and checked by the Inside the Scanner desk, a small editorial team. The desk makes one claim, and it is easy to check: each sentence of fact matches a named source, and that source is stated in the text so a reader can go and read it. How that responsibility is divided is on the editorial policy.
Corrections
A correction is the most useful thing a reader can send. If a figure here does not match the source now in front of you, or a source has been updated since this page was written, the page will be checked against that source and, if it is wrong, corrected and dated. That is the whole point of naming sources in the text. The address is on contact the desk, and what happens to a message once it arrives is described on the privacy page.