Advancement in medical imaging methods for health care

The fast-moving advancement in medical imaging technology has revolutionized health care science. When information technology is integrated with imaging technology, it takes health care to new horizons. On the other hand, there is an increase in the number of health care workers to meet the need of growing population and requirement of quality health services. This accelerates the demand for applied and basic research on top of professional practices.

The potential and promising ideas in imaging technology are knowledge discovery and data mining in large image databases, use of smart mobile devices in facilitating handy health care services, applications of biomechanical engineering methods and analytic methods for medical imaging. These thoughts are realized in the content of this book where it is divided into two parts.

Part I deals with image management and knowledge discovery. It starts with an overview of recent advancement in picture archiving and communication systems. Then the emerging mobile and cloud technology is discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, the applications of data mining and big data are explored.

In Part II, the scope of medical imaging methods is extended to improvements in health care and disease detection. Chapter 4 highlights computer-aided methodology, while the recent study on the finite element analysis for breast image registration is elaborated in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 is a comprehensive risk analysis of Alzheimer diseases using image analysis while Chapter 7 examines bone mineral density evaluation methods by imaging.

The intended readers of this book are graduate students or researchers who are interested in research topics related to imaging technology. In addition, this book will be of interest to health care community. It provides information for readers to meet the striking needs of this evolving area of health care science, and may inspire new ideas for research.

The scope of this book includes:

• Image processing and analyses
• Computer-aided diagnosis and detection
• Visualization and modeling
• Picture archiving and communications systems (PACS)
• Advanced application of different imaging modalities such as Ultrasonic imaging, Positron Emission Tomography, Radionuclide imaging, Computerized Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Digital Imaging, etc.
• Biomedical engineering applications of biomedical imaging​