(1)
Department of Radiology, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA
Abstract
Metaphor in Radiology is a subject of continual fascination for me. As a hobby, if you will, I like to explore the role, value and extent of the use of metaphor as a learning tool in diagnostic imaging. I and my coworker, a recently graduated resident in our program have mined the indexes of the major encyclopedic texts in Radiology and six other specialties in order to develop specialty-based lists of referenced metaphors which are well established as being denoted as signs of imaging appearances. We found that Radiology far more than any other specialty depends on these metaphors to transmit meaning and understanding. In surgery, in contrast, metaphoric signs are few but eponymic markers are abundant as both diagnostic signposts and as identifiers of operations. Apparently, surgeons are eager to commemorate their specific contributions whereas radiologists are not so impelled to commemorate their insights with their names. And Radiology’s predominance as a metaphor-information discipline is not emulated to anywhere near the same extent in the two other predominantly visual specialties of Dermatology and Pathology.
Metaphor in Radiology is a subject of continual fascination for me. As a hobby, if you will, I like to explore the role, value and extent of the use of metaphor as a learning tool in diagnostic imaging. I and my coworker, a recently graduated resident in our program have mined the indexes of the major encyclopedic texts in Radiology and six other specialties in order to develop specialty-based lists of referenced metaphors which are well established as being denoted as signs of imaging appearances. We found that Radiology far more than any other specialty depends on these metaphors to transmit meaning and understanding. In surgery, in contrast, metaphoric signs are few but eponymic markers are abundant as both diagnostic signposts and as identifiers of operations. Apparently, surgeons are eager to commemorate their specific contributions whereas radiologists are not so impelled to commemorate their insights with their names. And Radiology’s predominance as a metaphor-information discipline is not emulated to anywhere near the same extent in the two other predominantly visual specialties of Dermatology and Pathology.
A metaphor creates a linkage between two distinct and otherwise separable realms of knowledge, not by imposing the relationship as an exact identity characteristic of a simile but by revealing a connection of hitherto disparate notions and/or objects. The result of a good metaphor, one that by its freshness and incisiveness creates a novel bridge between the familiar beyond radiology now linked to the revealed perception of an imaging manifestation. It attaches that radiologic fact to the general substrate of established memory so that the new insight, too, can be long retained.
Related posts:
Stay updated, free articles. Join our Telegram channel
Full access? Get Clinical Tree
