Introduction

Abstract

“Medical imaging refers to several different technologies that are used to view the human body in order to diagnose, monitor, or treat medical conditions”. All imaging modalities have in common that the medical condition becomes visible by some form of contrast, meaning that the feature of interest (such as a tumor) can be recognized in the image and examined by a trained radiologist. The image can be seen as a model of the imaged tissue. Images in the context of this book are digital. This implies a finite resolution with the pixel as the smallest element. Furthermore, all imaging modalities lead to some degradation of the image when compared to the original object. Primarily, the degradation consists of blur (loss of detail) and noise (unwanted contrast). Some underlying principles are common to all imaging modalities, such as the interpretation as a system and its mathematical treatment. The image itself can be seen as a multidimensional signal. In many cases, the steps in image formation can be seen as linear systems, which allow simplified mathematical treatment.