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Looking Within: How X-Ray, CT, MRI, Ultrasound, and Other Medical Images Are Created, and How They Help Physicians Save Lives »

Book cover image of Looking Within: How X-Ray, CT, MRI, Ultrasound, and Other Medical Images Are Created, and How They Help Physicians Save Lives by Anthony Brinton Wolbarst

Authors: Anthony Brinton Wolbarst, Gordon Cook
ISBN-13: 9780520211827, ISBN-10: 0520211820
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of California Press
Date Published: November 1999
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Anthony Brinton Wolbarst

Anthony Brinton Wolbarst, a physicist formerly at Harvard Medical School and the National Cancer
Institute, is currently at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University Medical School. Dr. Wolbarst is the author of Symmetry and Quantum Systems: An
Introduction to Group Representations
(1977) and Physics of Radiology (1993), and editor of Environment in Peril (1991).

Book Synopsis

A hundred years ago, a doctor had no way to look within the body of a patient other than to slice it open. That changed radically at the turn of the century, with the discovery of X-rays. X-ray and other forms of diagnostic imaging technology developed slowly but steadily from then until the 1970s, at which point a revolution occurred. Made possible largely by the availability of powerful but inexpensive computers, the rapid and widespread adoption of computed tomography (CT) and, a decade later, of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) greatly expanded the power of clinical imaging, and even changed the ways in which physicians view and think about the human body.
This unique guide explains how the principal imaging devices work and how they help physicians save lives. It gives readers a grasp of the major medical technologies that might come to play important roles in their lives, and it provides succinct, easy-to-understand, and reliable explanations for those who wish to explore the issues of the associated benefits, costs, and risks in an informed manner.
In nonspecialized language, Looking Within discusses how X-ray, fluoroscopic, CT, MRI, positron emission tomography (PET), ultrasound, and other medical pictures are created, and explores the essential roles they play in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. It should be of interest to patients and their friends and loved ones, and to those who are simply curious about this vitally important, exciting, and cutting-edge branch of medicine. Its brief but clear descriptions of how these essential tools work should also be of value to health care providers in supporting and educating their patients.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
1From the Watching of Shadows1
2Shadows on X-Ray Film: Radiography / Mammography27
3Shadows on Television, Live: Fluoroscopy53
4Shadows in Computers: Going Digital71
5Slices of Life: Computed Tomography (CT)93
6Like Embers in the Dark: Nuclear Medicine111
7Shadows from Echoes: Ultrasound129
8A Watery Mirror: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)143
9Epilogue: Looking Forward169
App. AProtons, Photons, and All That: A Brief Review of Atoms and Radiation177
App. BMore about MRI: T1 and Proton Spin Relaxation183
Notes197
Suggestions for Further Reading199
Index201

Subjects