Weird X-Ray Photos

Objects in anuses, drug mules, dog swallowings and eye injuries. These are just some of the reasons to X-ray a person or animal. Radiology has made incomprehendible advances to modern medicine allowing us to see inside the human body with a great deal of accuracy. Check out our collection of bizarre medical xray photos.

Radiography is the use of X-rays to view a non-uniformly composed material such as the human body. By using the physical properties of the ray an image can be developed which displays areas of different density and composition.

A heterogeneous beam of X-rays is produced by an X-ray generator and is projected towards an object. According to the density and composition of the different areas of the object a proportion of X-rays is absorbed by the object. The X-rays that pass through are then captured behind the object by a detector (film sensitive to X-rays or a digital detector) which gives a 2D representation of all the structures superimposed on each other. In tomography, the X-ray source and detector move to blur out structures not in the focal plane. Computed tomography (CT scanning) is different to plain film tomography in that computer assisted reconstruction is used to generate a 3D representation of the scanned object/patient.

Tap in the Eye

These amazing X-rays show how a man arrived with a tap and 16 inches of pipework stuck in his eye at a hospital’s casualty unit. But the terrified patient was forced to pull the tap out himself – because surgeons took three hours to send for a plumber to get it out. He had slipped in the bath impaling his left eye on the tap at his home.

No longer Hungry

This 2.5lb and 17 cm in diameter kidney stone was removed from a patient in Hungary, world’s largest.

William Tell Gone Wrong

Eleven-year-old Chinese schoolboy had a brush with death when his friend shot him in the head with a 16-inch arrow, according to numerous international media reports. The arrow entered his skull through the eye socket and lodged in the back of his head. Somehow, the boy was spared a fatal brain injury. There was no evidence that an apple was involved.

Keys in the Eye

This X-ray shows how, during a fall, a car key penetrated the eyelid of 17-month-old.

Stabbing Victim

X-ray images show how a teenage boy cheated death when a 5-inch knife was plunged into his head. The 16-year-old and two other young men were injured when they tried to stop a friend getting robbed at a bus stop.

Coke Swilling Buffalo Thieves

This X-ray was taken of a 60-year-old man who checked himself into Nishtar Hospital in Multan, Pakistan. He sought treatment because he claimed thieves had inserted a Pepsi bottle into his anus before stealing two of his buffalo. Those bastards.

Misplaced Nail

A dentist found the source of the toothache that a patient was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a four-inch nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.

Illumination in the Dark

Doctors in Pakistan removed a whole lightbulb from this prisoner’s anus. The man said he awoke with the problem, but doctors weren’t so sure.

Magnetism

An 8-year-old swallowed 10 magnets and 20 steel balls from a Magnetix toy set. The magnets and balls attracted one another within her digestive tract, ripping eight holes in her intestines.

Old Nail in the Head

The 5-centimeter nail shown in this X-ray was found after a man came to a Seoul, South Korea, hospital complaining of a severe headache.

Prison Break

This X-ray reveals a cell phone lodged in a Salvadoran prisoner’s lower intestine. According to news reports, the man is one of four prisoners who are members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang. The men were caught with cell phones, spare chips and a charger that they had attempted to smuggle, according to authorities at San Salvador’s Zacatecoluca prison.

Snakes on a Blanket

Surgery was needed to save Houdini, a 12-foot Burmese python in Ketchum, Idaho, that swallowed an entire electric blanket with the electrical cord and control box. The X-ray here shows the blanket’s tangled wiring and mechanism within the python’s intestine.

Knife Sniffing Dogs

A 6-month-old Saint Bernard puppy. The dog had the blade between her esophagus and stomach for about four days before it was removed in a two-hour operation.

#1 Threat to Snakes

A keeper at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on Australia’s Gold Coast holds a carpet python snake. The 32-inch snake swallowed four golf balls it likely mistook for eggs, according to local reports. Surgery was needed to remove the balls from the snake’s intestine. But they just look so delicious.

Hello Kitty

This X-ray reveals the Australian kitten discovered inside the gut of a 6-foot-long carpet python. Though the kitten’s skull was larger than the snake’s girth, the reptile dislocated its jaw to swallow the feline whole.

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