80 HAVE what it take
TO good to have
The second chapter on bony injuries passes from the
craniocervical via the middle and lower cervical to the thora-
columbar region, the latter section being the best organized.
In the last chapter, disk and neural injuries are discussed,
and this chapter therefore contains the most MRI material.
The various types of injury are discussed methodically and
well illustrated, and some recent material on MRI patterns
of spinal cord injury is included. In an appendix some practi-
cal guidelines for imaging of the spine in trauma, are set out.
This book will be of use to radiologists in training as well
as neurologists, traumatologists, spinal surgeons and others
involved in diagnosis and treatment of spinal trauma. Its
relatively modes price makes it a good buy.
J. T. Wilmink WOW
Groningen, The Netherlands
BEST
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Lecture notes on the Physics of Radiology
Armstrong, S. J.
ISBN l-85457-101-2
f 15.-
One of the problems that one meets when one wants to
know some of the physical backgrounds of diagnostic radi-
ology, is that you have to choose between complete but
lengthy books with a lot of detailed information, and short
and simple overviews that give hardly enough detail to under-
stand the subject. Susan Armstrong has written a third
choice: a synopsis of the physics of diagnostic radiology,
covering many fundamental items such as the physics of
X-ray production and adsorption; the technical basics of
equipment for film-screen exposure, fluoroscopy and special
techniques; a nutshell of the physics of CT, MRI, US and
radionuclide imaging and, of course, radiation protection and
quality control. Every section has been divided in several
subsections, dealing with a catchword and the information
needed to understand that. By that approach the book some-
times appears to be a little scrappy; a book that you use for
as a quick reference for the meaning of a word, an item. For
this it was designed.
The book is designed to meet the requirements for the first
examination for the Fellowship of the Royal College of
Radiologists (GB), as a ‘companion throughout the course
and a good read during the last anxious days before the exam’
(P. Wells, in his foreword to the book).
However, it is more than a summary taken from more
comprehensive books: the standard parts of the physics of
diagnostic radiology are covered in clear and simple texts,
almost completely without any formula, but with many
sketches and graphs. An important extra with respect to
many other books is the treatment of very practical details
such as for example, the function of in-built interlocks, or
factors that influence the lifetime of an X-ray tube. The more
recent technologies are described with more attention to the
practical implications than to the physical basis.
A drawback of the approach is that you can only use the
book in addition to a more complete book of physics: it
assumes much a priori knowledge, sometimes it is incomplete
or not fully correct (e.g., the resolution of a CT-scanning
depending only on matrix size).
The ‘lecture notes on the Physics of Radiology’ is a good
support for the study of the subjects and very useful in the
subsequent practise ofradiology. Also, for radiographers and
other professionals in radiology it will be useful to have at
hand.
M. A. 0. Thijssen
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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