Book Review: Photoacoustic imaging and spectroscopy

Abstract

Photoacoustic Imaging and Spectroscopy Lihong V. Wang, Editor, 499 pages +xx, ISBN: 978-1-4200- 5991-5, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton, Florida (2009), $149.95, hardcover. Reviewed by Barry R. Masters, Visiting Scientist, Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Visiting Scholar, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Fellow of AAAS, OSA, and SPIE. bmasters@mit.edu Photoacoustic Imaging and Spectroscopy is a multiauthored reference book that presents an advanced series of disparate chapters on the mathematical foundations, instrumentation, and applications of photoacoustic and thermoacoustic imaging. Lihong Wang, an eminent author, educator, scientist, and leader in the field of photoacoustic imaging and spectroscopy, is the editor of this book. Clearly this field is extremely active as evidenced by the diversity, the scope, and the quality of the field’s published literature. Nevertheless, I was surprised to read the back cover, which I think is overreaching with the claim that photoacoustics may make as dynamic a contribution to modern medicine as the discovery of the x ray once did. While this may be a “typical” overstatement by the publisher’s marketing team, it should be noted that within one year of the discovery of x rays there were more than one thousand publications related to the topic.