Imaging Studies Section (Echocardiograms and Angiograms)

IMPORTANT NOTE:

To prepare for the imaging studies section of the board exam, you MUST know the answer option lists for the section INSIDE AND OUT. You can find the answer option lists on the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) official website, http://www.abim.org/, under the tab, “take the exam your complete guide,” then under the “Prepare for the Exam: Take the Tutorial” section, near the bottom is a pdf file called “Sample Cases—Electrocardiograms and Imaging Studies (pdf).” Pay extra attention to the last page, which explains the scoring of sample cases.

In this section, we have put heavy emphasis on the specific diagnoses that are on the answer option lists to complement bread and butter clinical training in imaging. We have included still-frame images which illustrate key findings, however, the actual exam contains moving images and will require COMPLETE CODING OF ALL YOU SEE RATHER THAN JUST THE KEY FINDINGS. All of the still-frame images in this chapter are available as moving images on our multi-media website. See Fig. 1 for an example of complete coding. The number of each key finding corresponds to the number of the diagnosis on the answer option sheet, but be mindful that the exact number may change over time as the answer option list evolves. We recommend that you try viewing the movies on the website with ABIM answer options list and code each and every case in a timed manner first.