Medical Photography for Scientific Publishing (MedPhotoPubl) in Rheumatology and Rehabilitation

Medical photography is an essential component of scientific publishing in rheumatology and rehabilitation. Besides, challenges in daily clinical practice such as disease monitoring can be addressed with the support of medical photography. Although recommendations exist for medical photography in diverse areas of medicine, there is a lack of comprehensive literature addressing this point in rheumatology and rehabilitation. In this regard, the current article aimed to provide standards and recommendations for Medical Photography for Scientific Publishing (MedPhotoPubl) in rheumatology and rehabilitation. The adopted measures during medical photographing should be given in detail in publications. The details to be mentioned are 1) image acquisition protocol, 2) patient position, 3) anatomical region specification (e.g., laterality, reference landmarks), 4) photographic view, 5) task definition, 6) phase specification, 7) timepoint labeling, 8) image editing procedures, 9) image metadata documentation, 10) image storage, and 11) patient informed consent statement. Accordingly, a reporting checklist was developed based on the recommendations for MedPhotoPubl in rheumatology and rehabilitation.