Dear Colleagues,

Physical principles and mathematical procedures of medical imaging technologies have been extensively studied during last decades. Statistical investigation into medical imaging technology not only provides a better understanding of the intrinsic features of the technology (analysis), but also leads to an improved design of the technology (synthesis). Statistic medical imaging involves three main parts from theory to application: imaging physics and mathematics, imaging and image statistics, and statistical image analysis. CT (computed tomography), PET (positron emission tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) are the major and commonly used medical imaging modalities. Many technologies are developed to assess their basic imaging protocols and provide a method to conduct similar statistical investigations of even more complicated imaging protocols. Although the basic statistical properties are discussed, less work has been done on the advanced statistical aspects of these techniques. Statistics of medical imaging will fill this gap and provide a theoretical framework for statistical investigation into medical imaging technologies.

Thus, we are interested in physical principles and mathematical procedures of medical imaging technologies, statistical properties of imaging data (measurements) at each stage and three levels of image data (pixel intensities): a single pixel, any two pixels, and a group of pixels (a region), and evaluation of statistical image analysis methods.

For this, it is important to collect the experiences of different developed methods and strategies that have been implemented and consider their impacts. Research articles and reviews in this area of study are welcome.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yinghua Fu

Section editor