retrospectography

English

Etymology

From retrospect +‎ -o- +‎ -graphy in both senses. The radiologic sense (from the early 20th century) was developed by radiology technicians and radiologists (who were not yet differentiated from each other at the time). The sense of reviewing photographs and learning additional insights about their subjects/contents was developed in 2017 by Jeffrey Ross of the website JBRish.com.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɒɡɹəfi

Noun

retrospectography (uncountable)

1. (medicine, radiology, historical) A specific type of clinicoradiopathologic conference that was used in the early decades of radiography (circa 1900 until World War I), whereby practitioners would make a radiologic diagnosis and then systematically compare it with the subsequent clinical course and any surgery, intraoperative or postoperative radiography or fluoroscopy, and/or autopsy. This method helped advance radiology, given that it is inherently a field of discerning clinicoradiological and clinicoradiopathological correlations. It is no longer codified under this name, because it is no longer necessary in routine practice.
   • 1997, Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century (Sloan Technology Series)‎^[1], Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, retrieved 2022-05-13, page 39:

     They honed their diagnostic skills with a procedure they called "retrospectography." The process, which was used in the United States until about 1913, began with a doctor circulating X-rays of a patient without an accompanying diagnosis. […] The retrospectographers also built up a library of images illustrating difficult diagnoses, and they circulated radiographs to a range of specialists.

2. (art, photography, rare) The further appreciation of a photograph or picture which reveals insights into that image which were not recognized or appreciated at the time of original capture.

Related terms

• retrospectoscope (jocular but semantically related)
• retrospectroscope (jocular but semantically related)