Description

Preface

We were originally motivated to write An Introduction to the Principles of
Medical Imaging simply because one of us, CNG, could not find one text, at
an appropriate level, to support an optional undergraduate course for
physicists. Shortly after we started the book, we realised that both medical
students in general and medical research scientists in training could also
benefit from the conceptual approach that we had chosen for this book.
Thus from the outset we have been keeping in mind the needs of two
apparently different parishes of readers. Although we have had to take care
over the different levels of assumed knowledge for the two parishes, our
teaching experience has shown that they share one very important
characteristic: neither group by choice uses the symbolic language of
applied mathematics in their own descriptions of the physical world. Thus it
is inappropriate to introduce medical imaging with too heavy a reliance on
purely mathematical descriptions. Instead we have chosen to use words and
pictures wherever possible.
In many ways a more conceptual, even qualitative approach to the
subject is actually more appropriate