Purpose of This Book

This book has been written with the intent of providing a snapshot of some of these fields and how they are being applied to medical imaging. The contributors to this book come from equally diverse areas, from clinical, industrial, and academic institutions. We have been fortunate to include contributions from among the foremost experts in these fields to this text.

While we consider this book to cover the state of the art in each area, it is intended as a text for graduate level students, scientists, and engineers working in the field of medical imaging. It is laced liberally with figures to aid in understanding of the rather advanced subject matter and provides abundant references for the reader seeking additional information on a given subject.

Organization

We have put together a broad-spectrum text and have tried to incorporate chapters on the major medical imaging techniques. The book is loosely divided into six different parts based on the modality. These consist of (i) optical imaging methods, (ii) x-ray imaging, (iii) ultrasound imaging, (iv) nuclear medicine and hybrid imaging, (v) magnetic resonance imaging, and (vi) software methods for image processing. Within each part, there are further chapters on specific aspects of each technique and in many cases, clinical examples and real-world experiences with these techniques.

While we realize that a single text cannot do justice to over 100 years of medical imaging, we hope that we have provided the reader with a snapshot of the state of the art and have encouraged them to further develop their own ideas in this exciting and ever-changing area.

Troy H. Farncombe

Krzysztof Iniewski

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