Biomedical Imaging: Principles and Applications

Preface

Biomedical imaging is improving healthcare and helps selecting the most efficient therapy. Imaging technologies provide snapshots of biomarkers and diseases such as cancer. Imaging can take this information even a step further, showing the activity of these markers in vivo and how their location changes over time. Advances in experimental and clinical imaging are likely to enable doctors not only to locate and delineate the disease but also to assess the activity of the biological processes and to provide localized treatment. New imaging technologies are increasingly being used to understand the biological complexity, diversity, and the in vivo behaviour. Imaging is considered an important bridge between basic research and bed-side application.

A wide range of technologies is already available for in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro imaging. The introduction of new imaging instrumentation requires the combination of know-how in medicine and biology, in data processing, in engineering, and in science. Biologists and MDs are interested in technical basics and methods of measurement. Engineers need detailed descriptions of the biomedical basis of the measured data. Scientists want more background information on instrumentation and measurement techniques. Different imaging modalities always have specific strengths and weaknesses. For each modality, the basics of how it works, important information parameters, and the state-of-the-art instrumentation are described in this book. Examples ...