Meet the editor

Yongxia Zhou completed her PhD from the University of Southern California in Biomedical Imaging in 2004. Her research interest is radiology and neuroscience applications. She was trained and worked as a neuroimaging scientist in several prestigious institutes, including Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and NIH. Her research focuses on multimodal neuroimaging integration, including MRI/PET and EEG instrumentation

and makes best use of multiple modalities to help interpret underlying disease mechanisms. She has authored more than five monograph books, and edited several books for well-known publishers, including IntechOpen and Nova Science. She has published more than 100 papers and abstracts in and served as reviewer and editor for many reputable international journals and conferences.

Contents

**Section 1**

*by Yongxia Zhou*

**Section 2**

**Section 3**

*by Evangelos Gazis*

Imaging in Neuropathic Pain *by Zhi Dou and Liqiang Yang*

PET and PET-CT Tomography Imaging

*by Long Chen, Hua Sun and Yunchao Huang*

**Preface III**

Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Applications **1**

**Chapter 1 3**

**Chapter 2 23**

Nuclear Medicine PET/CT Imaging and Applications **39**

**Chapter 3 41**

**Chapter 4 63**

Medical Imaging Processing Techniques **79**

**Chapter 5 81**

Longitudinal Changes of Structural and Functional Connectivity

and Correlations with Neurocognitive Metrics

The Application of Functional Magnetic Resonance

The Ionizing Radiation Interaction with Matter, the X-ray Computed Tomography Imaging, the Nuclear Medicine SPECT,

PET-CT Principles and Applications in Lung Cancer Management

Research in Medical Imaging Using Image Processing Techniques

*by Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah and Tariq Alqahtani*

## Contents


Preface

Medical imaging is a rapidly growing field with recent tremendous technical developments. Great achievements have been made regarding disease diagnosis from basic science to clinical applications. Most well-known imaging modalities include the widely used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positronemission tomography (PET), and X-ray computed tomography (CT). With the high-resolution imaging acquisitions and advanced imaging processing methods, accurate and precise functional, structural, and molecular images can be applied to patients to improve diagnosis and treatment. Several distinct imaging perspectives such as cutting-edge imaging methods from principles to data analysis, better correlation with neurocognitive function, as well as detailed examples and summaries of disease monitoring could help convey the methodological, technical, and devel-

opmental information of medical imaging principles and applications.

prognosis of neuropathic pain.

The first section of the book provides functional MRI (fMRI) and structural imaging techniques and applications. Chapter 1 assesses baseline and longitudinal functional and structural connectivity changes associated with age and gender at both baseline and longitudinal follow-up time points. Correlation with neurocognitive data from a large sample of healthy older adults and apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotypic effects has been investigated thoroughly. The strengths of this study are the extensive and well-characterized large sample of older adults and multiple imaging metrics, including advanced fMRI, multiple structural imaging to capture extensive properties of functional connectivity, activity, and white matter integrity, and myelination. The results in this chapter are presented with full-spectrum quantification of neuroimaging and neurocognitive/genetopic data with significant impact on the longitudinal neuroimaging application field. Chapter 2 describes the brain regions of neuropathic pain studied with fMRI techniques, including resting state and task fMRI and structural changes. The introduction of fMRI techniques and central mechanisms of neuropathic pain, including pain perception and processing in the brain, stages of pain (chronic), and two types of pain (hyperalgesia vs. allodynia), are covered in detail. The significance of fMRI in the treatment of neuropathic pain has been evaluated, including consistent quantification of pain intensity, treatment efficacy, and non-invasive transcranial stimulation application. This review chapter provided readers with the current status and future directions of fMRI technology to better serve the clinic and assist in the diagnosis and

The second section of the book covers the imaging principles of X-ray radiation, PET, and applications in cancer. Chapter 3 gives a detailed and quantitative description of radiation interaction, substance absorption, and PET/CT imaging detection systems. The principles of ionizing radiation interaction with matter and participant are introduced for different particles, including photons, electrons, and heavy charged particles. Different types of possible attenuations and absorptions are covered. Radiation detectors and data acquisition as well as reconstruction systems of several imaging modalities are described. The strong points of this chapter are accurate formula layout and illustrative figures. Chapter 4 investigates PET/CT (with anatomy details from CT and metabolism information from PET)
