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Fundamental mathematics and physics of medical imaging. (English) Zbl 1357.92003

Series in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (ISBN 978-1-4987-5161-2/hbk; 978-1-315-36821-4/ebook). xxiii, 318 p. (2017).
Undoubtedly, biomedical and medical imaging constitutes a rapidly developing branch of image processing and image understanding with a vast array of essential healthcare applications. The progress exhibits two well-defined dimensions. One stems from the advances of image processing being regarded as a rapidly growing standalone discipline. Another one is associated with the progress of imaging modalities themselves already established in the medical domain. The authors were successful in bringing together these two aspects in a well-organized and articulate manner.
The book is structured in five main sections (each comprising several chapters) that naturally reflect the fundamental facets of technologies commonly encountered in medical imaging. Section I is concerned with basic concepts, including generic concepts such as imaging system performance measures, classes of detectors, and ideas of digital planar imaging. Section II continues along the same direction as the previous section, discussing more advanced concepts (X-ray image contrast, radiographic contrast of biological tissues, determinants of contrast for other imaging modalities). Those are aligned with the related mathematics of linear systems, random processes, noise sources, and quantization effects. Section III is devoted to more advanced concepts like noise resolution models, the Rose model, and receiver operating characteristics. Dynamic imaging is the focal material of Section IV, whereas Section V deals with tomographic imaging.
There are several outstanding features of the book, which undoubtedly appeal to the reader and definitely help navigate the student through the key material of medical imaging. First, a balanced coverage of the physics and the underlying mathematics, blended in a convincing manner along with strong motivating arguments, is a visible forte of the book. Second, a broad coverage of the key technologies and key functional components is provided. Third, commonly encountered functional modules of medical imaging systems are discussed. Fourth, the text comes with carefully selected homework problems, which is a good asset of any book.
In sum, the textbook is a prudently organized, authoritatively written and highly informative material that will appeal to all novices to this exciting field of image processing.

MSC:

92-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to biology
92C55 Biomedical imaging and signal processing
92C50 Medical applications (general)
92B05 General biology and biomathematics
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