A CT scan of the abdomen can show the organs, blood vessels, and bones in your abdominal cavity. The multiple images provided by the scan can give your doctor many different views of your body.

The treatment: After giving the patient antibiotics, the doctors performed a type of abdominal surgery called a laparotomy to remove the foreign object. It turned out to be a fish bone.

Doctors performed an ultrasound of the man's abdomen and found an abscess — a pus-filled mass — in the right lobe of his liver. They drained the abscess and gave the patient a 10-day course of ...