Statistics - Love or Hate?

There is no clinical medical imaging paper without statistics. Research can't live without it, but most researchers wish they could. Big Picture is a Welcome Trust magazine, which is directed to teachers and students. Therefore, the magazine has really simple and clear examples. The new issue is about statistics. There is lots of information relevant for medical imaging researchers: 1) the story about the advertisement of a CT scan that was forbidden to broadcast, 2) types of medical studies from the statistic point of view (see picture below) and 3) general concepts about research. See more information here.

The new issue pdf can be read here. The previous issue was about medical neuroimaging, which can be read here.

Procrastination with IEEE

IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, read I-Triple-E). The good thing about procrastination with IEEE is that you don't feel that bad, because it is work related. IEEE spectrum is the magazine for the members and there is also a version online: http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/imaging
I found this article very interesting in IEEE spectrum and I recommend:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/imaging/medical-imaging-group-calls-for-fewer-ct-tests-and-more-research-on-health-effects

And also there are seminars available online:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/

Stanford Mini Med School

I have recently come across these videos from Stanford medical school, where an introduction about several topics of health and research are talked about. The list of videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/course?list=ECD7B0DBD8C28BDEA2 

I post here the one about medical imaging:

Databases of Medical Images

Medical Image Databases are great to work on medical imaging processing and sometimes to get a feeling of the images before using real data. I have found some databases in the internet that I consider quite interesting:


Minimal Interval Resonance Imaging in Alzheimer's Disease MIRIAD
This database is focused on Alzheimer Diseases patients, but also control patients.

Mini Mammographic Image Analysis Society Database Mini-MIAS
A database with mammograms and with medical information.

Medpix Teaching database MedPix
A database with examples to teach from CT to MRI.

Retrospective Image registration Evaluation RIRE
A database with images to register and the ground truth to compare.

Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative ADNI
This a huge database of patients images with PET and MRI.

Do you know other good databases?

Best Medical Imaging Book

A great book is a precious help. I have several medical imaging books, which I use to cross information. General medical imaging books which focus on the physics and engineering principles are my favorites. Here is some of them:

Medical Imaging Physics. William Hendee and E. Russel Ritenour.
http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Imaging-Physics-William-Hendee/dp/0471382264

Medical Imaging Signals and Systems. Jerry Prince and Jonathan Links.
http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Imaging-Signals-Systems-Prince/dp/0130653535

The Essential Physics of Medical Imaging. J. Bushberg, J. Seibert, E. Leidholdt Jr., J. Boone.
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Physics-Medical-Imaging-Third/dp/0781780578

These two are also quite famous and used, but I have personally never used them:

Introduction to Medical Imaging: Physics, Engineering and Clinical Applications. N. Smith and A. Webb.
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Medical-Imaging-Engineering-Applications/dp/0521190657

Fundamentals of Medical Imaging. Paul Suetens.
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Medical-Imaging-Paul-Suetens/dp/0521519152

Do you know any other good books?

MRI courses 2013

This week, I have received the new list of ESMRMB courses for 2013. This courses are a great way to upgrade your skills and knowledge. I, myself, am thinking of taking the Advanced Neuro Imaging: Diffusion, Perfusion, Spectroscopy.

Links for School of MRI: http://www.esmrmb.org/index.php?id=/en/school_of_mri.htm
Links for Lectures of MRI: http://www.esmrmb.org/index.php?id=/en/lectures_on_mr/courses_2013
Links for Hands-On MRI: http://www.esmrmb.org/index.php?id=/en/index/hands-on_mri.htm

ISMRM courses: http://www.ismrm.org/meetings-workshops/future-ismrm-workshops/

Other interesting courses:
Erasmus Course on MRI: http://www.emricourse.org/index.html

Basic Knowledge courses:
MRI education (with Catherine Westbrook): http://www.mrieducation.com/courses/index.html

Teaching MRI

Teaching MRI is a hard task, specially if the students don't have a strong physics background. Three of my favorite resources (and free) to use in classes are:

MRI online course: http://www.imaios.com/en/e-Courses/e-MRI
This online course has great animations to explain concepts and brief explanations. I think some of the animations are very helpful to explain details to students. You have to create an account to see the animations properly, but this requires little effort. 

Virtual MRI (VMRI): http://www.iftm.de/elearning/vmri/idx_vmri.htm
This program can be easily run in your computer and gives a good idea about parameters for several sequences (Spin-Echo, Gradient-Echo, Inversion Recovery, Fast Spin-Echo), such as TR, TE, TI and ETL. Furthermore, it shows the k-space of the images and allows us to manipulate it and see the effect. Other image quality parameters can also be changed: FOV, pixel size, ... I strongly recommend this for computer classes where students have to apply their knowledge.

OSIRIX DICOM database: http://www.osirix-viewer.com/datasets/
This database contains several MRI datasets acquired for different regions (with and without pathology) and with different sequences. I usually don't use OSIRIX, because I don't have MacOS... I use one of the free visualization programs I referred in this post.