why do tapeworms show on 100 year old x-rays but not new ones with contrast

Question: why do tapeworms show on 100 year old x-rays but not new ones with contrast
- Keywords:
  tapeworm
Asked by 689mede52 to Greg, Jen, Laura, Mobeen, Paul on 9 Mar 2016.
- Greg Melia answered on 9 Mar 2016:
  
  I haven’t heard about this one. Do you have a web link I can follow?
- Paul O'Mahoney answered on 9 Mar 2016:
  
  I too would like to see these old x-rays, it sounds fascinating! (and a little gross)
- Jen Lowe answered on 9 Mar 2016:
  
  I haven’t heard about this – do you have a reference?
- Laura Haworth answered on 9 Mar 2016:
  
  Yes I agree with the others I would like to read more about this.
  Maybe it is something to do with how the contrast is displayed on the image or something

689mede52 commented on 11 Mar 2016:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948559/figure/F5/

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Paul commented on 14 Mar 2016:

Thanks for sharing the paper with us 689, I hadn’t seen that one before. I think the answer is that what the X-Rays show aren’t necessarily the tapeworms themselves, but are calcified cysts as a results of a tapeworm infection. There is a recent example of this that was widely mis-represented at the time (these xrays show something similar to the paper you linked): http://www.snopes.com/fauxtography-sashimi-tapeworms/
So I think x-rays can be used to have a look at the cysts, but I’m not sure if it is used routinely and not necessarily on the tapeworms themselves

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Question: why do tapeworms show on 100 year old x-rays but not new ones with contrast