Radiation dose and image quality optimisation in medical imaging was published in the University of Salford (UK) Open Access online database in April 2015. Material held in this and similar databases is available for free via the Internet, to be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Publishing in this fashion has benefits to the author, for instance it can potentially give a greater exposure to the work, leading to more downloads and increased citations, and it complies with funding body Open Access policies. It has wider benefits too, for instance it increases access to research widening the spread of knowledge and ideas, and it increases access to publically funded research. The book can be accessed/downloaded for free - http://usir.salford.ac.uk/34439/.
The book contains 12 chapters written by students and academic university staff from five European countries, including Portugal, Switzerland, UK, Norway and the Netherlands. Staff comprised a multi professional mix, including physics, radiography, engineering and occupational therapy; students included PhD, MSc and BSc. Six chapters are literature reviews; these are associated directly with six chapters that are experimental science. Overall the book contains a range of interesting material concerned with topical areas of research. Ten chapters are concerned with reducing dose in x-ray procedures, including CT and projection radiography. Two chapters are different and they consider pressure ulcer formation in diagnostic imaging/radiotherapy from volunteers lying on two surfaces – a thin imaging couch mattress and a hard imaging couch table top. The experimental work used a pressure sensitive mat to map interface pressures between volunteers lying on the two surfaces.
The book arises from a 3 weeks residential summer school held in Lisbon in which the experimental work was conducted, analysed and presented and the review chapters were drafted. Subsequent to the summer school the draft chapters were further developed and then formatted into book style. The summer school was funded by Erasmus, a European funding initiative. One participant was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Previously the summer school was held at the University of Salford, UK and ten publications arose from it.1–11 In 2015 the summer school will be held in Groningen, the Netherlands and we anticipate another Open Source book will be published based on the work undertaken.
References
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