Neuroimaging techniques that can help elucidate and characterize the nature and mechanism of tissue injury and disease progression in neurodegenerative disease are of particular importance given its their roles in seeking successful preventive and therapeutic treatments. Studying large-scale samples with various disease mechanisms using multi-parametric imaging, as well as revealing the correlations between the neuroimaging metrics and clinical data including neurocognitive function and neuropsychological inventories to elucidate multiple factors affecting the neurodegeneration processes in brain are the main topics of this book. In addition, the neural underpins of cognitive and psychological functions with advanced functional imaging techniques can provide better cross-validation and clinical symptom relevance of multi-parametric data. Expanding the current findings with higher diagnosis accuracy and detection specificity in multiple neurodegenerative diseases as well as better differentiation of each type are the ultimate goal. The results in this book will extend the current notion of diagnosis value of various relatively new imaging techniques in multiple neurodegenerative diseases including traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, multiple sclerosis and early stage of Alzheimer's disease such as mild cognitive impairment. Specifically, the neurobiology and related imaging findings of the four representative neurodegenerative diseases will be introduced and reviewed, including brain region-specific and disease-related alterations, unique clinical symptom of each disease, as well as previous findings and challenges. There is an increasing body of literature suggesting that damage to the default mode network, hypothalamus, thalamus and hippocampus neuronal networks and local injuries might be under-diagnosed and may account for some of the sequelae following the neurodegenerative injuries including trauma and dementia. The relatively novel imaging results to differentiate each disease using advanced functional connectivity, neuronal activity, microstructure integrity analysis based on structural connectivity, multi-dimensional morphometry and molecular imaging tracers including amyloid and tau for neuropathological burden quantification were presented to differentiate each type of disease. We then briefly reviewed some of the therapeutic effects of traditional Chinese medicine with neuroimaging quantifications to help treating neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, our work proves that the multi-parametric neuroimaging methods with more than twelve metrics and numerous tight clinical association data presented in this book are the most forefront and up-to-date with enough sensitivity, precision and resolution. Taken together, multiple neuroimaging metrics haved been demonstrated in this book to identify and quantify significant and distinct brain alterations at function, microstructure, morphology and molecular scales in different types of neurodegenerative diseases with high sensitivity and specificity. These comprehensive imaging features could be combined to improve disease diagnosis accuracy. The aim of this book is thus intended to provide both beginners and experts in biomedical imaging and health care a broad and complete picture as well as the new developments of using multiple metrics in improving disease identification and diagnosis accuracy. This book would hopefully capture the interests of colleagues interested in neurodegenerative disease diagnosis and treatment, and could help convey the methodological and integrative perspectives of multi-parametric neuroimaging applications.

Every second, users produce large amounts of image data from medical and satellite imaging systems. Image mining techniques that are capable of extracting useful information from image data are becoming increasingly useful, especially in medicine and the health sciences. Biomedical Image Analysis and Mining Techniques for Improved Health Outcomes addresses major techniques regarding image processing as a tool for disease identification and diagnosis, as well as treatment recommendation. Highlighting current research intended to advance the medical field, this publication is essential for use by researchers, advanced-level students, academicians, medical professionals, and technology developers. An essential addition to the reference material available in the field of medicine, this timely publication covers a range of applied research on data mining, image processing, computational simulation, data visualization, and image retrieval.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a very important clinical imaging tool. It combines different fields of physics and engineering in a uniquely complex way. MRI is also surprisingly versatile, 'pulse sequences' can be designed to yield many different types of contrast. This versatility is unique to MRI. This short book gives both an in depth account of the methods used for the operation and construction of modern MRI systems and also the principles of sequence design and many examples of applications. An important additional feature of this book is the detailed discussion of the mathematical principles used in building optimal MRI systems and for sequence design. The mathematical discussion is very suitable for undergraduates attending medical physics courses. It is also more complete than usually found in alternative books for physical scientists or more clinically orientated works.

Biophotonic diagnostics/biomedical spectroscopy can revolutionise the medical environment by providing a responsive and objective diagnostic environment. This book aims to explain the fundamentals of the physical techniques used combined with the particular requirements of analysing medical/clinical samples as a resource for any interested party. In addition, it will show the potential of this field for the future of medical science and act as a driver for translation across many different biological problems/questions.