Susan Summerton, M.D. is an accomplished doctor, educator, public speaker, and artist, who has transformed science into art by digitally recreating images from the human body into unique pieces of art.

Dr. Summerton graduated from Temple Medical School in Philadelphia and then did a residency in diagnostic radiology at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Currently she is an Associate Professor of diagnostic radiology at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia where she teaches and specializes in breast and body imaging.

Susan’s artistic career began serendipitously several years ago and has escalated in the last few years. Over 20 years ago, inspired by a poster she had in her home called the Butterfly Alphabet (the letters A-Z had been collected from close up photographs of patterns on butterfly wings,) she started collecting letters, shapes and symbols she discovered embedded in x-ray images with the goal of creating her own Human Body Alphabet for a poster for her office. Then in 2014, for the Centennial Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, she entered a contest where radiologists were asked to submit their most interesting case or a piece of art and for the first time she realized she had all the letters of the alphabet and created a piece that said: RSNA 100: A century of Transforming Medicine. This first piece she ever made received Honorable mention and was displayed in the Centennial Pavilion in Chicago during the week of the meeting. Since then she has won the First Prize, Photography category, at Frank H. Netter Symposium on Arts and Health, Thomas Jefferson University in 2017, among other mentions and awards.

Now she exhibits her art at medical shows and art shows and her pieces are available for viewing and purchase at the world famous Mutter museum in Philadelphia. Mostly she enjoys creating commissioned personalized pieces of art often given as gifts and finds that both the recipient and the giver of her artistic gifts seem to find great joy in her art. Her favorite piece, which graces the cover of this month’s Physician Outlook, perfectly captures her view of her art and her profession: The Human Body is the Finest Work of Art.

After all, as people say: “her x-ray art helps connect them to a shared humanity, regardless of age, gender or nationality, because inside our bodies we’re all the same.”