Anatomic Imaging: A Case Study

Anatomic imaging produces high-resolution images with good contrast resolution while functional images capture tissue function (Rubin, Greenspan, & Brinkely, 2014).
Anatomic imaging focuses on capturing perfectly the detailed structure of the body i.e., the organs’ size, and shape of organs; thus identifying any atypical structures. According to Rubin, Greenspan and Brinkley (2014), “Since the goal in anatomic imaging is to depict and understand the structure of anatomic entities accurately, high spatial resolution is an important requirement of the imaging method”. The function is not important in anatomic imaging. In contrast, functional imaging depends solely on visualizing the tissue function such as identifying tissue ischemia, neoplasm, and inflammation (Rubin et al., 2014). This can be illustrated over a period of time. Once an individual can see the progressive change in the organ’s function. For instance, an ultrasound Doppler can illustrate normal blood flow and impeded blood flow in the heart. Also, brain scans use functional imaging. A patient’s brain lights up in a scan when he/she answers yes/no questions or executes cognitive tasks such as counting or recognizing objects.

Spatial resolution pertains to the crispness and clear definition of the image. Basically, it measures the number of pixels per image and how closely those pixels are to each other (Rubin et al., 2014). On the other hand, contrast resolution measures the subtle differences in intensity within an image which correlates to X-ray attenuation. Also, in digital images, the contrast resolution within an image depends on the number of bits per pixel. Temporal resolution is a measure of the time required to generate the image. Rubin et al., (2014) reported that it takes thirty images per second to generate a non-blurry beating heart