Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The design and manufacturing of modern medical devices requires knowledge of several disciplines, ranging from physics, over material science, to computer science. Thus, designing a single lecture as an introduction to medical engineering faces a lot of challenges. Nonetheless, the manuscript aims at being a complete and comprehensive introduction to this field for students in the early semesters. Medical imaging devices are by now an integral part of modern medicine, and have probably already been encountered by all students in their personal life.

In the digital age, any medical image needs to be transformed from continuous domain to discrete domain (i. e. 1’s and 0’s) in order to be represented in a computer. To do so, we have to understand what a and a is.

In the previous section, we have described common signal processing methods that may be applied to any kind of signal. In this chapter, we will adopt these concepts to the domain of image processing as it is commonly performed in medical imaging devices.

This chapter points out the key aspects of minimally invasive surgery with particular focus on abdominal surgery using endoscopes. The comparison between minimally invasive and conventional open surgery is illustrated and several procedures are detailed. Moreover, this chapter introduces the term and its benefits.

We perceive the physical world around us using our eyes, but only down to a certain limit. Objects with a diameter smaller than 75 cannot be recognized by the naked eye, and due to this reason, they remained undiscovered for the most of human history.

Modern MRI systems allow physicians to look inside the body without the use of ionizing radiation (see Fig. 6.1). They provide excellent soft-tissue contrast for morphological imaging as well as a range of possibilities for functional imaging, e.g., for visualizing blood flow, tissue perfusion or diffusion processes.

In this chapter, the physical principles of X-rays are introduced. We start with a general definition of X-rays compared to other well known rays, e. g., the visible light. In Sec. 7.2, we will learn how X-rays can be generated and how they can be characterized with respect to their energy. The most relevant concept to understand how X-ray imaging works is the behavior of X-rays when they interact with matter.

CT is doubtlessly one of the most important technologies in medical imaging and offers us views inside the human body that are as valuable to physicians as they are fascinating (cf. Fig. 8.1).

Modern medical imaging is achieved with state-of-the-art devices, that use cutting-edge technology from different fields of engineering. Oftentimes, progress is driven by discoveries in a at first sight seemingly unrelated field of research.

In contrast to the imaging used to visualize tissues in the body, imaging is used to observe biological processes. In the field of nuclear medicine, functional imaging relies on radioisotopes that are tagged to tracers whose biochemical properties cause them to congregate at regions of diagnostic interest in the body.