Preface

The second English edition of Differential Diagnosis in Ultrasound Imaging has been completely revised in content and scope and brought up to current clinical and scientific standards by the authors and editors.

Clinical ultrasound is, by virtue of its unsurpassed local resolution and its unique real-time imaging capabilities, highly significant in diagnostic findings. And, because of its availability and cost-effective and risk-free implementation, it is of the greatest value for patients. The basis for this edition is, as always, grayscale ultrasound, which, along with additional imaging in color Doppler sonography and power Doppler, constitutes a substantial improvement in differential ultrasound diagnostics.

Ultrasound diagnostics have also been further improved in all areas of medicine by con- trast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), which has become a first-line method in the differentiation of tumors. This development is reflected in our inclusion in this second English edition of additional CEUS images portraying differential

diagnostic findings. Guidelines and recommendations of the EFSUMB (European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology) study group and the WFUMB (World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology) guidelines have furthered additional development of the use of CEUS.

The inclusion as editors of Professor Dr. Lucas Greiner (DEGUM seminar leader and director of ISCUS, the International School for Clinical Ultrasonography) and Professor Dr. Dieter Nuernberg (DEGUM seminar leader, secretary of WFUMB, and ex-president of DEGUM), both of whom are long-time functionaries of EFSUMB, highlights the considerable demands placed on textual, pictorial, and scientifically grounded findings. Both of them have contributed their ideas and experience, a necessary response to the growing demands in the field of ultrasound imaging.

Above all we want to thank Ms. Gabriele Kuhn-Giovannini, Assistant Editor, Thieme Publishers, for her detailed suggestions and intensive supervision. We particularly want to

thank Mr. Stephan Konnry, Executive Editor, Thieme Publishers, for fostering this English edition, and Ms. Gillian Whytock, Prepress Projects, for overseeing the production of this book. We are also very grateful to the copyeditor, Mrs. Kathleen Lyle, Oxford, UK, for the subtle revisions, without which inaccuracies and ambiguities in the text would have gone uncorrected.

Real-time images of the highest spatial resolution, in color, and with CEUS: this is today’s clinical ultrasound. Its development has been spectacular in all fields, a fact to which this book, for the second time, we believe, testifies. This edition has gained greatly in volume, quality of content and currency, and it will be of great value both as a reference and as a systematic textbook.

Guenter Schmidt, MD

Lucas Greiner, MD

Dieter Nuernberg, MD

Preface

Contributors

Contributors

Barbara Beuscher-Willems, MD

Diakonie Klinikum Bethesda

Freudenberg, Germany

M.W. Max Brandt, MD

Marien-Hospital-Wesel gGmbH

Wesel, Germany

Christian Goerg, MD

Professor, Department of

Hematology-Oncology

University Hospital Giessen and Marburg

Marburg, Germany

Lucas Greiner, MD

Professor, International School for Clinical Ultrasonography (ISCUS) Wuppertal, Germany