The second edition of Cambridge University Press’s Diagnostic Ultrasound: Physics and Equipment is a superb textbook that impressed me in many ways. Initially, I was concerned that based on its title, the book would read like a text used at the engineering school across town. This worry was misplaced, however, as the book reads like a series of very well written and extremely well illustrated review articles that one might find in a major radiology journal geared toward clinical radiologists.
Specifically, this textbook makes excellent use of phantoms and cartoons to illustrate ultrasound principles. One could glean a lot of information from this fine book merely by reading the figure captions. This book consists of 15 chapters, including chapters dedicated to B-mode imaging, Doppler ultrasound, and spectral Doppler ultrasound. I found the chapter describing Doppler ultrasound especially helpful. Chapters are also dedicated to relatively newer technology and material that may be relatively unfamiliar to American radiologists, such as ultrasound contrast agents, three-dimensional ultrasound, and elastography. Additionally, the four to 10 questions at the end of each chapter allow the reader to determine if he or she has truly understood and retained the material presented in the chapter. The 24-page glossary at the end of the book is a great reference for definitions of commonly and not so commonly used ultrasound terms.
This softcover book is lightweight and quite portable, easily fitting into a medium-sized purse or briefcase. Given its portability, the book makes for excellent airplane or subway reading.
To be clear, this book is not designed to help you improve your differential diagnoses of, for example, liver lesions seen at ultrasound. This book does not review normal and abnormal grayscale anatomy. What this book does do well is explain the physics behind the production of an ultrasound image in language that is easy to understand and with ample illustrations.
I think the perfect audience for this volume is a staff physician who teaches ultrasound to radiology residents and fellows. The understandable language with which ultrasound is explained is easily translated to reading room readouts. If you are such an academic radiologist, I think you will be pleased if you purchase this book.
Residents and fellows would also benefit from reading this book, although I think this would be more of a second-tier book for residents and fellows after they have mastered a volume dedicated to differential diagnoses. A practicing community radiologist who would like to brush up on newer ultrasound techniques would get a lot of value for his or her dollar by purchasing this book. The chapter dedicated to quality assurance would likely be helpful for anyone tasked with supervising ultrasound quality assurance at his or her institution.
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