In the past five years, the development of new imaging technologies that make possible faster and more accurate diagnoses has significantly improved the imaging of disease and injury. This new edition of Squire's Fundamentals of Radiology describes and illustrates these new techniques to prepare medical students and other radiology learners to provide the most optimal and up-to-date imaging management for their patients. Not only are new diagnostic techniques outlined, such as the multidetector computed tomography diagnosis of pulmonary embolism and the diffusion-weighted magnetic-resonance imaging of stroke, but hundreds of new diagnostic images have been included to illustrate the radiological characteristics of common diseases with state-of-the-art computed radiography, ultrasound, multidetector computed tomography, and magnetic-resonance images. The text has been completely reviewed and updated to present the latest and best strategies in diagnostic imaging.

New interventional radiology procedures have been added, including vertebroplasty, a percutaneous injection treatment of painful spinal compression fractures; uterine artery embolization, a surgical alternative to hysterectomy in women with painful or bleeding uterine fibroids; and radiofrequency ablation, a percutaneous technique for treating unresectable tumors in the liver and other organs with probes that superheat and thus destroy cancer cells.

A new chapter on advances in diagnostic imaging describes many cutting-edge imaging technologies, such as three-dimensional and digital imaging, functional magnetic-resonance imaging, PET-CT (positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography), cardiac calcium CT scoring, multidetector gated cardiac CT, and molecular imaging.

Robert A. Novelline, M.D., is Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School. He is also Director, Emergency Radiology, and Director, Undergraduate Radiology Education, Massachusetts General Hospital.