This book analyses the historical context and progression of "significant innovations" beginning with the industrial revolution, starting around 1750 to the present. It explores the interrelationship, causes, and evolutionary process of contemporary "disruptive" inventions and the role played by global finance and international commerce to support these. First, the authors examine the environment and circumstances surrounding the inventors and explore their backgrounds to determine, why at a specific time, they identified a need that became the seed for invention and, what was their method of successfully commercializing their innovation. Secondly, they focus on the financing of the inventor, the innovation, and the commercialization of the invention(s). They analyze the changes in finance during the shift from a labor-based production process to a more capital-intensive production process, and what new financial products or financial markets were created to facilitate this transition. Third, they explore the impact of global commerce on the inventor country's innovation environment and international competition impacting the innovation's production, distribution, and sales, as well as, investigating any financial impact from the demand side and whether that impact was domestic or global in character. Furthermore, they consider if and how global finance and international commerce including the migration of people, together play a role in helping the disruptive invention satisfy a need in society, whether from a production or consumption perspective. Finally, they search for common elements that repeatedly inspired inventors and their disruptive innovations over time. This book will appeal to global government officials, business leadership, early career professionals, and students across a number of disciplines including finance, economics, business, engineering, and technology.

This edition of Neuroimaging Clinics focuses on these minimally invasive, image-guided therapies. It includes guidelines for patient assessment and selection, choices of pharmaceuticals and materials commonly used, as well as, advice from noted experts about complication avoidance. Common procedures such as biopsy, epidural steroid injection and vertebroplasty (or balloon assisted vertebroplasty) are discussed. Newer procedures, such as sacroplasty, synovial cyst rupture, spinal cord stimulators, neurolysis, percutaneous discectomy, and minimally invasive treatment of spinal stenosis, are introduced.

As image-guided spine interventions have increasingly become a primary strategy for managing back pain, the tools and capabilities available to practitioners have grown significantly. This fully revised edition of Image-Guided Spine Interventions presents the latest procedures available to physicians who perform minimally invasive spine interventions. The comprehensive text covers the fundamentals -- such as spine anatomy, procedural materials, and pharmacological requirements -- along with chapters devoted to key topics such as discography, percutaneous descectomy, vertebroplasty and balloon kyphoplasty, epidural steroid injections, and autonomic nerve blocks. Additionally, three new chapters are included in the Second Edition, covering pulsed radiofrequency procedures, sacroplasty, and spinal cord stimulation. Each technique is presented in a straightforward manner that allows the reader to effectively evaluate and implement new procedures. The text is further enhanced by nearly 200 images and illustrations. Edited by Dr. John Mathis, a former president of the American Society of Spine Radiology, and Dr. Stanley Golovac, who both have clinical practices devoted solely to spine procedures and pain management, the book will be useful to all physicians dealing with back pain, including radiologists, pain anesthesiologists, spine neurosurgeons, and orthopedists. Physicians will once again find that Image-Guided Spine Interventions, 2nd Edition, is the pivotal authority on image-guided techniques for the spine.