Although many patients still associate the imaging department of a hospital with the frontiers of medicine, the discipline is nearly 120 years old.
The effort to set quality standards for modern CT and MRI systems are inspired by experience with older imaging technologies, especially X-rays. In general, safety issues remain the focus for lawmakers, while recognized professional organisations ensure that quality control efforts remain up to date with ever-changing technologies. Top professional bodies usually function in such capacities under a legislative umbrella. For example, the American College of Radiology (ACR) has a mandate from the US Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA); it also seeks to ensure implementation of both safety and quality programs at the imaging facilities of accredited healthcare providers.

Roots in the 1890s
Medical imaging was born after the discovery of X-rays by German physicist Wilhelm R

The origin of disciplines
If neither the knife nor the X-ray machine had been invented, there would be no disciplines of surgery or radiology as we understand them today. In short, tools themselves can lead to the creation of complex disciplines, be they medical or otherwise.

Many scientific and medical disciplines are, in principle, defined by tools or tool sets and the ability of certain humans to use them effectively and efficiently. Tools may be material artefacts or tools of thought and may indirectly lead to ethnocentric thinking and mesa-communication*.

For example in the case of Surgery, tool sets, such as knives and saws, and the art of using them, were developed over thousands of years by those devoted to healing. In modern times, the disciplines which were originally associated with these basic tools have evolved into a multitude of different surgical and interventional subspecialties, each with its own refined set of tools and instruments.

A similar situation can be observed for the discipline of Radiology. Since the discovery of the X-ray by Roentgen in 1895, radiology has evolved into a multitude of different diagnostic and therapeutic subspecialties that may be identified by their specialized sets of imaging tools and devices.

Finally, the discipline of Computer Science or informatics has managed over a period of only about 70-80 years to factor itself into some 40 specialities; a few of them are hardware tools but most are software tool-oriented.

It is interesting to note that some tool sets of these disciplines are in the process of being merged towards potentially creating a speciality defined as

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) is a patient survey that provides structured inputs to monitor and assess hospital services, and drive their improvement.  HCAHPS (pronounced