The diagnostic process after 25 years

In the diagnostic process the first goal of the clinician is to obtain as clear a view as possible of the patient and the associated problems. The second is to conceptualize the patient's problems as disease categories, thereby making the diagnosis. Today we can perceive our patients and their problems in ways that physicians of the past never dreamed of. Major advances are being made with three noninvasive imaging techniques: nuclear medicine, computerized axial tomography and ultrasonics. Motion and change are the essence of the physiological approach to medical diagnosis, and medical images should be viewed as symbolic representations of the patterns and changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of the physical and chemical substances that make up our bodies.