Why a book on contrast echocardiography? Over the past dozen years enough experience has accumulated to warrant a more extensive treatment of this method. Furthermore, there are new developments that suggest increased clinical utility for contrast echocardiography in the future. This book aims to summarize the "state of the art" for those interested in echocardiography - presumably mainly cardiologists, but here and there those of a more technical bent will find useful information as well. We feel that a more basic understanding of microbubble dynamics is necessary to advance research for such applications as transmission through the lungs, videodensitometric quantitation of cardiac output, intracardiac shunts, etc. All of these topics are extensively dealt with. The reader will note that many of the clinical chapters are written by pediatric cardiologists. This is only natural, since shunt detection and analysis of flow relationships are relatively more important in congenital heart diseases, and cur rently represent the most important uses for contrast echo cardiography in day-to day practice.

This book will familiarize the reader with recent advances in echo imaging technology with special emphasis on echo enhancing agents. Several important strides have been made in this field during the past few years, especially in the contrast enhancement of conventional and color Doppler images. The book begins with chapters on the history of contrast echocardiography, the principles of contrast echo and descriptions of new contrast agents capable of transpulmonary passage following intravenous injection. Safety issues in contrast echocardiography are also discussed. The second section of the book deals with clinical uses of echo contrast agents. Their usefulness in the identification of cardiac structures and assessment of pathological lesions using both transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography are fully discussed. Technical and practical considerations in the use of various contrast agents are also described. The use of contrast echo in the identification of cardiac sources of embolism as well as possible mechanisms and clinical significance of spontaneous contrast echoes are also covered. Six chapters fully discuss the basics of contrast enhancement of conventional and color Doppler images and its clinical utility in the noninvasive assessment of pulmonary artery pressure, regurgitant and stenotic lesions and in the delineation of coronary arteries. Another chapter describes the non-cardiac applications of the echo contrast enhancement technique. The final section of the book investigates the role of echo contrast enhancement in quantitative cardiovascular analysis.

Journalists, always very direct and in search of sensation, essentially asked me two questions on the occasion of this workshop: What were the goals of the meeting? With the improvement of diagnosis through the development of image techniques, didn't the contrast media already have their future behind them? Many answers were provided during the course of the workshop, and in order to best answer the journalists I proposed the following synopsis. 1. Since the 1979 Colorado Springs workshop organized by E. Lasser, progress has been so rapid and the newly available works so numerous that another meeting on an international level for the purpose of pre senting and discussing these advances appeared indispensable. Why not then in Europe and why not in Lyon? To expand on this progress, by 1981 the new contrast media with less-hyperosmolar molecules, still in the trial stage in 1979, were al most all available commercially for angiography, albeit at prohibitive prices. The advantages of these various media are becoming better known; moreover, in the wake of Lasser's work, our understanding of the pathophysiology of their noxious effects is also advancing rapidly owing to the use of models (for the target organs: heart, vessel wall, nervous system, kidney; and for the more general reactions: blood cells, coagulation, complement system, circulating enzymatic systems). In addition, further new molecules are currently being studied in re search laboratories. 2.

The 2010 edition of the European Conference on Computer Vision was held in Heraklion, Crete. The call for papers attracted an absolute record of 1,174 submissions. We describe here the selection of the accepted papers: Thirty-eight area chairs were selected coming from Europe (18), USA and Canada (16), and Asia (4). Their selection was based on the following criteria: (1) Researchers who had served at least two times as Area Chairs within the past two years at major vision conferences were excluded; (2) Researchers who served as Area Chairs at the 2010 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition were also excluded (exception: ECCV 2012 Program Chairs); (3) Minimization of overlap introduced by Area Chairs being former student and advisors; (4) 20% of the Area Chairs had never served before in a major conference; (5) The Area Chair selection process made all possible efforts to achieve a reasonable geographic distribution between countries, thematic areas and trends in computer vision. Each Area Chair was assigned by the Program Chairs between 28–32 papers. Based on paper content, the Area Chair recommended up to seven potential reviewers per paper. Such assignment was made using all reviewers in the database including the conflicting ones. The Program Chairs manually entered the missing conflict domains of approximately 300 reviewers. Based on the recommendation of the Area Chairs, three reviewers were selected per paper (with at least one being of the top three suggestions), with 99.

This book encompasses the proceedings of a very successful post graduate course entitled "Radiology Today" held in Salzburg in June 1980. It was organised by Dr. Martin W. Donner of Baltimore and Dr. F. H. W. Heuck of Stuttgart. It was attended by 230 radiologists from 17 countries. The aim was to select a certain number of subjects in diagnostic radiology and in each to have a broad spectrum overview reviewing recent advances presented by an acknowledged expert, followed by a series of rather more detailed papers on various aspects of that field, again given by acknowledged experts drawn from countries throughout Europe and also from the United States of America. This series of presentations on a theme was then followed later the same day by a "workshop" discussion at which the speakers, sometimes joined by other experts from collateral fields of interest, acted as a panel for discussion with the over-view speaker acting as moderator.