1 - Medical Imaging

Abstract

Medical imaging forms a key part of clinical diagnosis, and improvements in the quality and type of information available from such images have extended the diagnostic accuracy and range of new applications in health care. Medical imaging plays an important role in neurology, cardiology, and cancer centers. This chapter provides a brief overview of the basic physics, instrumentation, and clinical applications of each imaging modality and recent technological advances. Planar X-ray imaging is used for diagnosing bone breaks, lung disease, a number of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases (fluoroscopy), and conditions of the genitourinary tract, such as kidney stones. In contrast to X-ray, ultrasound, and MRI, nuclear medicine imaging techniques do not produce an anatomical map of the body, but instead image the spatial distribution of radioactive materials that are introduced into the body. Ultrasound is non-ionizing, real-time, portable, and inexpensive compared with other clinical imaging modalities. Ultrasound is particularly functional for obstetrics and quantification of blood flow using Doppler measurements. The major uses of MRI are in the areas of brain disease, spinal disorders, angiography, cardiac assessment, and musculoskeletal damage. Diffuse Optical Imaging is characterized by its noninvasive nature, chemical specificity, and good temporal resolution. NIR methods are used in mammography and real-time monitoring of blood oxygenation levels of patients during medical procedures.