Abstract
This chapter examines the impact of imaging on patients in a diagnostic era that often privileges disembodied data over the patient voice and, by extension, the patient's humanity. It explores the human and psychological impact on patients confronted by high-tech images of their bodily interiors, and how the objective image may be rectified with the subjective physical body. Wilhelm Rontgen's application of X-rays to the human body entrenched an intrusive into the living patient. Much humanities research relies on concepts elaborated by Michel Foucault, specifically the medical gaze or the clinical gaze, which includes all physician-gathered sensory data: the sight/touch/hearing trinity. Increasing reliance on technologies leads doctors to believe that instruments are more reliable diagnostic tools than subjective information gathered from patients. The technological extension that imaging affords the Foucauldian is, however, complex, both objectifying and constructing patients.
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