Biomedical images of the human body are an invaluable source of information that clinicians can use in order to make a correct and final diagnosis. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is used by radiologists as a second opinion has become one of the major research areas in medical imaging. The computer assisted diagnosis need not be comparable to that of physicians, but is surely complementary. PACS...

Various types of medical applications of antennas have widely been investigated. In particular, hyperthermia is one of thermal therapies and is a modality for cancer treatment utilizing the difference of thermal sensitivity between tumor and normal tissue. The author et. al. have developed a coaxial-slot antenna, which is one of thin microwave antennas to be employed for interstitial as well as...

N eedle insertion is a critical aspect of many medical treatments, diagnostic methods, and scientific studies, and is considered to be one of the simplest and most minimally invasive medical procedures. Robot-assisted needle steering has the potential to improve the effectiveness of existing medical procedures and enable new ones by allowing increased accuracy through more dexterous control of ...

Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. For centuries the art of medicine has been dominated by bumps, bruises, or other symptoms, felt by the patient or discovered by the physician, with eyes ever-magnified by increasingly sophisticated scanning technology: the microscope, the xray, and eventually the MRI. But however powerful the machine, the unde...

The high cost of new diagnostic and treatment technologies means that they have to be used selectively, and at that point decisions must be made about who should get to use them. In recent years there have been increasing charges of improper use of these new technologies, coupled with increasing discussion of their costs and benefits. Unfortunately, the use of such technology tends to spread in...