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This article shows an image claiming to be of a patient with prostate
cancer, and claims that it is an MR image. The image provided is actaully
a CT image, and it has been artifically coloured, presumably by someone
(not a radiologist) who was unable to appreciate it in grayscale.
Furthermore while it certainly shows prostatic enlargement, it appears
more likely to be due to benign prostatic hypertrophy. The patient may
well have co-existent prostate cancer, but the image does not demonstrate
this. Any radiologist involved in reporting prostate MRI could have
provided an accurate MR image, and it is disheartening that the BMJ can
publish such an image without the involvement of an imaging specialist.
Why is the BMJ always so keen to publish coloured images of CT and
MRI scans, that are naturally acquired in black and white? No radiologist
is familiar with these images, and yet they recur time and time again in
your pages. I find it rather demeaning.
To make matters worse the "axial coloured magnetic resonance image
scan of a patient with prostate cancer" appears to me to be a greyscale
axial computed tomography scan of a patient with benign prostatic
hypertrophy, that has been attacked by a child with a box of paints. If
you had sourced the image from a radiologist rather than a photo library,
this error might have been avoided. But it wouldn't have been as pretty.
Inaccurate image
This article shows an image claiming to be of a patient with prostate
cancer, and claims that it is an MR image. The image provided is actaully
a CT image, and it has been artifically coloured, presumably by someone
(not a radiologist) who was unable to appreciate it in grayscale.
Furthermore while it certainly shows prostatic enlargement, it appears
more likely to be due to benign prostatic hypertrophy. The patient may
well have co-existent prostate cancer, but the image does not demonstrate
this. Any radiologist involved in reporting prostate MRI could have
provided an accurate MR image, and it is disheartening that the BMJ can
publish such an image without the involvement of an imaging specialist.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests