Methods and Applications of Statistics in Clinical Trials, Volume 2: Planning, Analysis, and Inferential Methods

Chapter 15

Imaging Science in Medicine, III: Digital (21st Century) X-Ray Imaging

Anthony B. Wolbarst, Patrizio Capasso and Andrew R. Wyant

15.1 The Computer in Medical Imaging

Following the introduction of Chapter 14, we return to image receptors, but this time focus on computer-based ones. We assume that you are familiar with the basic operations of computers, but we begin with a very brief refresher on bits and bytes. We then explore the creation, storage, processing, etc., of digital images. After that, we turn to the digital counterparts of screen-film and image-intensifier fluoroscopic IRs, namely, computed radiography (CR), digital radiography (DR) and digital fluoroscopy (DF), and finally to CT. The technologies of SPECT, PET, MRI, US, are discussed in some detail in the book Medical Imaging—Essentials for Physicians, by the authors and also published by Wiley (2013), from which this highly condensed chapter was extracted.

For some of the older analog modalities such as fluoroscopy, planar nuclear medicine, and ultrasound, computers are now enabling their most recent incarnations to produce and display enhanced diagnostic information whose quality and flexibility their inventors could not have imagined. Digital processing can draw out contrast that would be invisible without it; radically diminish the level of visual noise that otherwise would overwhelm anything of interest; sharpen up edges and produce better resolution; combine the information content from multiple adjacent ...