Advances in Medical Engineering

Continuous improvements in medical imaging together with advanced image processing algorithms, biomechanical simulations and interventional monitoring strategies lead to significant progress in computer-aided diagnosis, treatment planning and therapy. Navigation in image-guided surgery provides significant advantages in accuracy due to today's sophisticated techniques of patient-data visualization in combination with the flexibility and precision of novel surgical tools like robots and laser scalpels. These tools give finer control over sensitive movements in diseased anatomical areas and therefore, allow more surgical procedures to be performed using minimally invasive techniques than ever before. In this book, research and development trends of physics, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences in biomedical engineering are presented. Contributions from industry, clinics, universities and research labs with foci on medical imaging (CT, MRT, US, PET, SPECT etc.), medical image processing (segmentation, registration, visualization etc.), computer-assisted surgery (medical robotics, navigation), biomechanics (motion analysis, accident research, computer in sports, ergonomics etc.), biomedical optics (OCT, soft-tissue optics, optical monitoring etc.) and laser medicine (tissue ablation, gas analytics, topometry etc.) give insight to recent engineering, clinical and mathematical studies.