When you scan written material, you look through it quickly in order to find important or interesting information.

When you scan a place or group of people, you look at it carefully, usually because you are looking for something or someone.

If people scan something such as luggage, they examine it using a machine that can show or find things inside it that cannot be seen from the outside.

If a computer disk is scanned, a program on the computer checks the disk to make sure that it does not contain a virus.

If a picture or document is scanned into a computer, a machine passes a beam of light over it to make a copy of it in the computer.

If a radar or sonar machine scans an area, it examines or searches it by sending radar or sonar beams over it.

A scan is a medical test in which a machine sends a beam of X-rays over a part of your body in order to check that it is healthy.

If a pregnant woman has a scan, a machine using sound waves produces an image of her womb on a screen so that a doctor can see if her baby is developing normally.

If a line of a poem does not scan, it is not the right length or does not have emphasis in the right places to match the rest of the poem.