Until recently, CT scanner performance was limited by a series of compromises. With single-detector scanners, one cannot select thin collimation and still maintain the required extent of volumetric coverage. Slow scans cause motion artifacts that impair image quality. The introduction of multidetector CT technology, however, has revolutionized the field. Currently multidetector, multislice CT scanners acquire up to four channels of data from interweaving spirals. The minimum gantry rotation period is as low as half of a second. This increased scan speed allows for thinner collimation and thus higher longitudinal or z-axis resolution in comparison with single-detector CT. The improved image quality with multidetector technology leads to new applications of CT, particularly in cardiac, vascular, and abdominal imaging. On-going clinical studies are evaluating the suitability of this new imaging tool for non-invasive screening and diagnosis of coronary artery disease. A particular advantage to the increased scan speed in vascular imaging is the ability to cut intra venous contrast dosage and still maintain peak enhancement CT throughout the entire acquisition. Thin-section, multiphasic acquisition during optimal arterial-phase and venous-phase enhan cement significantly improves the accuracy for small lesion and vessel detection, and enhances overall classification of abdominal neoplasms. On the other hand, the increasingly large volume data sets force to new ways of looking at, presenting, storing, and trans ferring images. Networking and two- and three dimensional data processing are the key words."

In the decades before 1914, the City of London was the premier international financial centre. However, this position was not long maintained, other industrial nations quickly and effectively challenged the influence of Britain, and following the disruption of the world markets caused by World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s, international hegemony slipped away for ever. The relationship of bankers and industrialists has often been cited as a key factor in this decline. Critics of the banks claim that, even before World War I, there were serious deficiencies in the financial provision provided by banks to the domestic industrial sector, and that these deficiencies handicapped Britain's competitive advantage in world markets, leading to the decline of their influence and power. This book examines these claims, and bringing to bear important new data that presents the debate in a novel and revealing framework, expounds an economic rationale for historical bank behaviour. Using a rich source of contemporary records, it presents a series of micro-economic studies into commercial bank assets and liabilities, financial crises, bank mergers, the professionalization of banking, the organization and conduct of the industrial loan business, and the nature of bank support given to industrial clients. The result is a new, authoritative interpretation of bank-industry relations in the half-century before World War I.