Radiology

Radiology

Radiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...

 is used in the diagnosis

Medical diagnosis

Medical diagnosis refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identify a possible disease or disorder , and to the opinion reached by this process...

 of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

.
A posterior-anterior (PA) chest X-ray

Chest X-ray

In medicine, a chest radiograph, commonly called a chest X-ray , is a projection radiograph of the chest used to diagnose conditions affecting the chest, its contents, and nearby structures...

 is the standard view used; other views (lateral or lordotic) or CT scans may be necessary.

In active pulmonary TB, infiltrates or consolidations and/or cavities

Cavitary pneumonia

Cavitary Pneumonia is a disease in which the normal lung architecture is replaced by a cavity. In the healthy lung, oxygen transport occurs at the level of the alveoli which has an average size of 0.1 mm...

 are often seen in the upper lung

Human lung

The human lungs are the organs of respiration in humans. Humans have two lungs, with the left being divided into two lobes and the right into three lobes. Together, the lungs contain approximately of airways and 300 to 500 million alveoli, having a total surface area of about in...

s with or without mediastinal or hilar lymphadenopathy. However, lesions may appear anywhere in the lungs. In HIV and other immunosuppressed persons, any abnormality may indicate TB or the chest X-ray may even appear entirely normal.

Old healed tuberculosis usually presents as pulmonary nodule

Nodule (medicine)

For use of the term nodule in dermatology, see Nodule In medicine, a nodule refers to a relatively hard, roughly spherical abnormal structure....

s in the hilar area or upper lobes, with or without fibrotic scars and volume loss.