Progress in medical imaging is a collection of papers that review the physics behind the development of modern medical imaging techniques. The chapters have a great deal of depth and generally present a balanced view of their topics. The editor attempts to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of medical imaging. His effort is impressive, but the casual medical reader, unversed in pattern recognition techniques or in the mathematics and design of specific equipment (such as an ultrasound imager), will find it difficult to relate this material to everyday patient imaging studies.
Medical imaging has clearly progressed over the last 20 years. The material presented here is for the use of engineers, physicists, imaging equipment manufacturers, and scientists from various disciplines who are concerned with generic imaging problems. This complete document contains an exhaustive list of references, reviews all aspects of the problem, and points the way for future development. It has excellent illustrations (eight in color), and its discussions of some unique physics problems make their clinical relevance clear.
The book’s first chapter is especially good; it presents the problems of cell imaging in real terms and provides a reader interested in the field with a complete overview of its development. Chapter 2 covers modern techniques of creating three-dimensional images that are especially helpful in oral and maxillo- and craniofacial surgery. Various methods are compared and contrasted to determine which yields the best results. The inclusion of a few more relevant medical examples and an explanation of the importance of these techniques would have extended the appeal of this chapter to a broader audience.
Chapter 3 describes a new method that may help improve the quality of chest radiographs and thereby improve diagnostic accuracy. It provides a very detailed account of this technique, the rationale for its design, and an evaluation of its usefulness. Chapter 4 thoroughly reviews positive emission tomography (PET), presenting its limitations and applications well and emphasizing definition of the important parameters of hardware design and evaluation of accuracy. The remaining five chapters review critical aspects of ultrasound imaging as it applies to static or dynamic analysis and visualization. The book is biased toward the pseudorandom code system and contains only minor references to other forms and formats of signal generation. Nonetheless, the information is useful, especially to someone who wants an in-depth overview of this field.
Newhouse should have included chapters on computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, two techniques routinely used in modern medicine. His book also lacks any discussion of the relation of imaging to angiography and nuclear medicine scanning techniques. Overall, the book contains useful ideas and a great deal of practical information for nonphysicians. This excellent overview of modern medical imaging could be used as a text in an advanced physics or engineering course. The lack of an index detracts from the quality of the book, which is otherwise very well produced.
