X-ray films as negatives for positives?

I have wondered about this for years: when I worked as an x-ray assistant film librarian, I was fascinated by the old, everyday, ordinary x-ray film. They look like very large (11x14?) negatives, which I think they are, and they are always read as a negative. Has anyone ever taken the time to print one as a positive, or is this just not done? I'm not talking about using a positive as a diagnostic tool but maybe as....Art??????

Anyone ever done this, or heard of it being done?

Think of the artistic possibilities of your old outdated x-rays!:rolleyes:

Thanks to all who reply.

With best regards.

Stephen S. Mack

a radiologist lived across the street from me.
he said that often times in the uk they looked at the xray as a positive print
but here in the states it was looked at as a negative.

there are probably privacy issues that swirl around using someone elses
xrays or getting access to them. i knew hank hill had images ( of his insides )
from a medical test removed from that fancy art gallery that was displaying them ...

Google is your friend.
http://www.gustogallery.com/index.php?action=showgal&cat=11
http://www.x-rayarts.com/

Well if you grab a generic X ray picture off the internet, then use any image handling program you want (Even paint) you can invert it and see the result.

I think that X rays haven't been viewed as positives in the past, as it was an extra step in processing, and the average physician was just looking for changes in density to show a problem. that works both in negative and positive format

jnanian said:

a radiologist lived across the street from me.
he said that often times in the uk they looked at the xray as a positive print
but here in the states it was looked at as a negative.

there are probably privacy issues that swirl around using someone elses
xrays or getting access to them. i knew hank hill had images ( of his insides )
from a medical test removed from that fancy art gallery that was displaying them ...

Click to expand...

It would depend on if the patient was identifiable, I mean if an ray print is positioned to remove the personal information and the patient is not identified, then it really does not matter.

In regards to whether an Xray is a positive or negative really does not matter, because it's artificial anyway, we don't see Xrays so as long as the person reading it knows what they are looking at, it doesn't matter. This is why digitally produced Xrays, are still presented as negative images.

In the army we had about 5x12 inch panoramic dental x-ray film. I would use it like paper and print a 35 mm though an enlarger on to the x-ray film. I would put them on the x-ray light box just for the fun of it. Nothing special but everybody liked them. Some of the Dentists that rotated asked for a 'film' print of our clinical building.