Observation towards medical diagnosis dates to Hippocrates, but with the publication of Vesalius’s ground-breaking anatomical work in 1543, the medical gaze on the once-hidden human interior gained reliability. Röntgen’s 1895 application of X-rays further entrenched this intrusive medical gaze, and since the 1970s, medical imaging technologies, including ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have become the norm in western medical practice. Yet the rapidity with which imaging technologies have become dominant far outstrips the consideration of their application to patients. How is the medical image rectified with the patient’s physical body? Drawing on both secondary and primary research, this paper examines the impact of medical imaging on patients in an era when data, flattened information, is often privileged in diagnostics over the corporeal body and the patient voice. Medical images are useful diagnostic tools, and “informative and even reassuring” to patients (Blaxter 2009, 776)—but they are also troubling. Even academics struggle to effectively communicate the complexities of the imaging experience. Medical images are alluded to as mirrors (Radstake 2007, 116; Wall 2009, 139), evoking senses of “distributed embodiment” (Radstake 2007, 129), or “self-objectification” (Wall 2009, 139). Patient interviews exploring encounters with medical imaging reveal that while patients often feel relieved by the information imaging provides, they also feel anxious and unheard, often due to the lack of communication around imaging experiences. Beyond these troubling, self-reflective, disembodied encounters with images, Waldby (2000) reminds us that these are not passive, but “operative images” upon which decisions are made that transform real bodies” (27).