Medical Imaging: Essentials for Physicians

"An excellent primer on medical imaging for all members of the medical profession . . . including non-radiological specialists. It is technically solid and filled with diagrams and clinical images illustrating important points, but it is also easily readable . . . So many outstanding chapters . . . The book uses little mathematics beyond simple algebra [and] presents complex ideas in very understandable terms."
―Melvin E. Clouse, MD, Vice Chairman Emeritus, Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Deaconess Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

A well-known medical physicist and author, an interventional radiologist, and an emergency room physician with no special training in radiology have collaborated to write, in the language familiar to physicians, an introduction to the technology and clinical applications of medical imaging. It is intentionally brief and not overly detailed, intended to help clinicians with very little free time rapidly gain enough command of the critically important imaging tools of their trade to be able to discuss them confidently with medical and technical colleagues; to explain the general ideas accurately to students, nurses, and technologists; and to describe them effectively to concerned patients and loved ones. Chapter coverage includes:

• Introduction: Dr. Doe's Headaches
• Sketches of the Standard Imaging Modalities
• Image Quality and Dose
• Creating Subject Contrast in the Primary X-Ray Image
• Twentieth-Century (Analog) Radiography and Fluoroscopy
• Radiation Dose and Radiogenic Cancer Risk
• Twenty-First-Century (Digital) Imaging
• Digital Planar Imaging
• Computed Tomography
• Nuclear Medicine (Including SPECT and PET)
• Diagnostic Ultrasound (Including Doppler)
• MRI in One Dimension and with No Relaxation
• Mapping T1 and T2 Proton Spin Relaxation in 3D
• Evolving and Experimental Modalities