Medical image processing

The objective of medical imaging is to obtain information relevant to the detection, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of disease. Detection relates to screening, as in X-ray mammography for breast cancer. Diagnosis is concerned with the identification of the origins of symptoms; often, the process is that of differential diagnosis, as in distinguishing between various possible causes of jaundice, and it is always linked to prognosis in that, to be worth doing at all, it should help to determine optimal patient management. In treatment, medical imaging has an increasingly important role for location and guidance, as in extra corporeal shock wave lithotripsy for the disintegration of kidney stones; indeed, interventional radiology is likely to lead to the development of new imaging applications during the next decade. Finally, monitoring the progress of natural processes and disease, and the efficacy of treatment, is an essential element in patient management; for example, in obstetrics the optimal date for delivery can be decided on the basis of ultrasonic measurements of fetal growth