Imaging Science in Medicine

Abstract The use of imaging technologies has expanded tremendously in medicine over the past two decades. This expansion reflects the evolution of new imaging tools that reveal human anatomy and physiology in ever‐increasing detail, as well as the development of digital data acquisition and processing techniques that extract information from human tissues in ever‐expanding degrees of subtlety. A further factor that is stimulating growth in imaging is the expansion of knowledge about biological systems at the cellular, molecular, and genetic levels. This factor is transforming medical imaging from a “technology‐push” discipline into one where fundamental biological questions, as well as important clinical issues, are the force driving development of new imaging technologies. This transformation demands enhanced knowledge about the interface between biological properties of tissues and the characteristics of imaging systems. Exploration of the existing state of knowledge about the interface, and what is needed for the immediate future, is the subject of this article.