A WOMAN with cervical cancer underwent surgery after doctors mistook her tattoos on a body image scan for other tumours.

The 32-year-old mother-of-four had been diagnosed with cervical cancer when, in November 2012, her doctors requested the imaging scan to check to see if the cancer had spread to other parts of her body, according to a report in Live Science.

The scan showed not only the woman’s cervical tumour, but also bright spots on the lymph nodes in her pelvis, which looked suspiciously like cancer, the researchers wrote in their report of her case, published this week in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The California woman, who had more than 14 tattoos on her legs, was injected with a radioactive tracer that makes tumours appear as bright spots on the scan.

Doctors later learned the lymph nodes actually contained deposits of tattoo ink, not cancer.

The woman didn’t have any complications after her surgery, and she was allowed to leave the hospital after three days, the report says.