The science of acoustics deals with the creation of sound, sound transmission through solids, and the effects of sound on both inert and living materials. As a mechanical effect, sound is essentially the passage of pressure fluctuations through matter as the result of vibrational forces acting on that medium.
Ancient Hebrew and Christian tradition relates that the universe was created in six days, following which there was a day of rest. What the old chronicles never recorded was that, on the eighth day, the Creator must have dropped back into the lab to do some tidying up.
This book grew out of a semester-long course on the principles and applications of ultrasonics for advanced undergraduate, graduate, and external students at Concordia University over the last 10 years.
The purpose of this book is to provide both an introduction and a state-of-the-art review of the essential physics and signal processing principles of diagnostic ultrasound in a single reference volume with a unified approach. This book draws together many of the ideas from seminal papers, the author’s research, and other sources in a single narrative and point of view.
The field of medical imaging is advancing at a rapid pace. Imaging modalities like x-ray radiography, x-ray computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, nuclear imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and optical imaging have been used in biology and medicine to visualize anatomical structures as large as the lung and liver and as small as molecules.
It is well-known that, in the past few decades, imaging techniques, and in particular ultrasonography, have led to great advances in clinical hepatology. In fact, the widespread use of these techniques resulted in the clinical discovery of hepatocellular carcinoma and other liver tumours.
In recent years, technology has revolutionized the practice of surgery. As part of this change, surgeon-performed ultrasound has become one of the most integral parts of the surgeon’s clinical practice.
This book is not intended for easy reading, but is written for those who want to familiarize themselves with a new method of intraoperative imaging and a navigation tool in neuroendoscopy.
Ultrasound is one of the most widely used imaging modalities in pediatric radiology and is set to continue to grow and develop as computing and equipment improves and new applications become available. Children are ideally suited to ultrasound, since their low levels of body fat contribute to ultrasound images of exquisite detail.
When I was asked to write this book, my first thought was how was I going to improve on what was already out there? There are literally dozens of enormous volumes covering the everexpanding field of MRI.
