In darkened rooms or in front of the glow of computer screens, Dr. Cosmo Haun has scrutinized more than 2 million X-ray images in a career spanning half a century.

At age 75, Northeast Georgia’s dean of radiology still goes to work five days a week, helping half a dozen local practices interpret the whites, grays and blacks that tell the story of skeletal, gastrointestinal and neurological abnormalities.

When Haun started his career in medicine, the images were processed on wet film and read by doctors who donned red goggles to help their eyes adapt to the darkness in which the exposures were studied. Today X-ray images are increasingly created digitally and viewed on computer screens without the need for film, and a host of other imaging technologies have been developed in the field of radiology.

But while MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds and other newer methods have brought huge advances in medicine, Haun’s skill and expertise as reader of X-ray images is still needed. He said he hasn’t had to learn all the latest imaging sciences, because there will always be a place for X-rays in medicine.

"If I had to keep up with everything going on in radiology, I would have retired," he said. "The advantage for me is I can concentrate on the one area I specialize in."

Not that Haun shuns new technologies. He keeps an iPhone nearby, frequents the Internet and even has his own Facebook account.

Haun was born in eastern Tennessee in 1933, the son of a sustenance dairy farmer who sold butter and buttermilk in nearby Sweetwater, Tenn.

At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Haun dabbled in agriculture, engineering and economics before deciding on a career in medicine. He graduated from the University of Tennessee’s College of Medicine in Memphis in 1959.

After several residencies and 19 years at Emory University, Haun came to Gainesville in 1984 to be chief of radiology at Lanier Park Hospital. He stayed there until the hospital was acquired by Northeast Georgia Health System in 2001.

Since then, Haun’s freelanced his services out to several area practices, typically going over a week’s worth of an office’s X-ray or CT images with physicians in a day.

Though it is unquestionably a science, there is some art to reading the images, Haun acknowledges, particularly in the study of those afflicted with clinical problems of the joints or connective tissue — known as rheumatology.

"I would say what I do with rheumatology has some art involved," he said. When it comes to looking at film, "Once you see a lot of them, you get a sort of feel for a diagnosis."

The long hours of staring at images to come up with answers appeals to Haun’s analytical nature.

"I enjoy trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together," he said. "The puzzle aspect of it still fascinates me. I still see things I’ve never seen before."

Haun called the advances in medicine during his long career "impressive."

"I’m convinced there’s been more change probably in the 50 years I’ve practiced medicine than there was almost throughout history, in terms of what we do and how we do it," he said. "Human nature hasn’t changed that much, but the way we live has changed so tremendously."

In typically modest fashion, Haun shrugs off a recent honor from the American Medical Association recognizing his 50 years in the field. Haun figures he’ll meet up with a few other active physicians at his golden anniversary class reunion later this year.

Haun’s eyesight, so critical to his area of expertise, remains good, and he has no interest in retiring.

"I don’t play golf," he joked.