Analytical & Numerical Methods for Anatomical & Metabolic Medical Imaging

MALANO, FRANCISCO M.; VALENTE, MAURO A.

Medical Imaging: Procedures, Techniques & Applications

Nova Science Publishers Inc.

Lugar: New York; Año: 2012; p. 250 - 300

There are several methods largely implemented and employed for daily medical imaging aimed to non-invasive early prevention and/or disease diagnosis. This chapter is dedicated to radiological techniques in medical imaging. It concerns the interaction of ionizing radiation with patient. From a general point of view, it may be possible to characterise radiological medical imaging techniques in two different categories, the first one devoted to structural information to get anatomical images, whereas there are other type of methods dedicated to obtain functional information in order to provide some metabolic patient characterization.It has been previously presented by several authors that this kind of imaging techniques may be suitably modeled and eventually improved by means of both theoretical and experimental approaches.This chapter will concentrate on analytical along with corresponding numerical models, both integrated in dedicated algorithms capable of handling main physical phenomena related with radiation transport and interaction processes. Detailed description will be presented about the main features regarding radiation transport modeling for radiological purposes. As example, the developed medical imaging approaches will be implemented and preliminary tested for conventional absorption contrast anatomical imaging, like radiography, mammography and computed tomography (CT), as well as functional imaging methods like single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).