The Medical imaging reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Medical imaging

Medical imaging refers to the application of imaging techniques and devices to living things.

Medical imaging may be "clinical", seeking to diagnose and examine disease in specific human patients (see pathology). Alternatively, it may be research-motivated, attempting to understand processes in humans or animal models.

Widely used medical imaging techniques (often termed modalities) include:

• radiography
• fluoroscopy
• computed axial tomography (CT)
• ultrasonography
• magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• nuclear medicine
• positron emission tomography

Other modalities are emerging, i.e. their application is at a research stage and they are not or not yet used in clinical routine. Among these are

• elastography
• opto acoustic imaging
• diffuse optical tomography

Mathematically speaking, medical imaging usually involves the solution of Inverse Problems. This means that we infer cause (in this case properties of living tissue) from effect. The effect in this case is the response to being probed by various means. In the case of ultrasonography the probe is ultrasound; in the case of radiography, the probe is X-ray radiation.

See also:

• Medical test
• Medical examination
• PACS

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