Glossary of Terms

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• Ablation

  A therapeutic procedure used to remove or destroy the function of tissue that is the source of the medical problem. It may be performed with laser energy, radiofrequency energy, or freezing.

• Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Imaging

  An imaging technique that shoots short pulses of ultrasound at targeted tissues and then monitors the tissue response in the form of shear waves that can be measured, and displayed as elastography images. These measurements and images can be used to diagnose or monitor the possible presence of diseased or cancerous tissue, based on the measured stiffness properties of tissues such as breast or liver where areas of increased stiffness may indicate the presence of tumors, fibrosis, scar tissue, and other types of disease or damage.

• Angiography

  A diagnostic X-ray imaging procedure used to see how blood flows through the blood vessels and organs of the body. This is done by injecting special dyes, known as contrast agents, into the blood vessel and using x-ray techniques such as fluoroscopy to monitor blood flow. Examples include coronary angiography (heart), cerebral angiography (brain), and peripheral angiography (hands, arms, feet and legs).

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  A feature where machines learn to perform tasks, rather than simply carrying out computations that are input by human users. Early applications of AI included machines that could play games such as checkers and chess, and programs that could reproduce language.