Digital Image Processing for Medical Applications

Hands-on text for a first course aimed at end-users, focusing on concepts, practical issues and problem solving.

Image processing is a hands-on discipline, and the best way to learn is by doing. This text takes its motivation from medical applications and uses real medical images and situations to illustrate and clarify concepts and to build intuition, insight and understanding. Designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students who will become end-users of digital image processing, it covers the basics of the major clinical imaging modalities, explaining how the images are produced and acquired. It then presents the standard image processing operations, focusing on practical issues and problem solving. Crucially, the book explains when and why particular operations are done, and practical computer-based activities show how these operations affect real images. All images, links to the public-domain software ImageJ and custom plug-ins, and selected solutions are available from www.cambridge.org/books/dougherty.

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Imaging systems; 3. Medical images obtained with ionizing radiation; 4. Medical images obtained with non-ionizing radiation; 5. Fundamentals of digital image processing; 6. Image enhancement in the spatial domain; 7. Image enhancement in the frequency domain; 8. Image restoration; 9. Morphological image processing; 10. Image segmentation; 11. Feature recognition and classification; 12. Three-dimensional visualization; 13. Medical applications of imaging; 14. Frontiers of image processing in medicine; Appendix A. The Fourier Series and Fourier Transform; Appendix B. Set theory and probability; Appendix C. Shape and texture; Bibliography; Index.

This practical book for advanced undergraduates and graduate students explains the concepts and the effective use of image processing tools for medical applications. Real medical images and hands-on activities are used to develop the reader's skill and confidence. All images, public-domain software and solutions available from www.cambridge.org/books/dougherty.

Geoff Dougherty is Professor of Applied Physics and Medical Imaging at California State University Channel Islands where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in image processing, medical imaging and pattern recognition. He has been conducting research in the applications of image processing and analysis to medical images for over 15 years, and is the author of more than 60 publications. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the IET and a Member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).