This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the 'biologization' of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science. In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.

Performance and medicine are now converging in unprecedented ways. London's theatres reveal an appetite for medical themes – John Boyega is subjected to medical experiments in Jack Thorne's Woycek, while Royal National Theatre produces a novel musical about cancer. At the same time, performance-makers seek to improve our health, using dance to increase mobility for those living with Parkinson's disease or performance magic as physiotherapy for children with paraplegia. Performance, Medicine and the Human surveys this emerging field, providing case studies based on the author's own experience of devising medical performances in collaboration with cancer patients, biomedical scientists and healthcare educators. Examining contemporary medical performance reveals an ancient preoccupation, evident in the practices of both theatre and healing, with the human. Like medicine, theatre puts the human on display in order to understand and, perhaps, alleviate the suffering inherent to the human condition. Medical practice constitutes a sort of theatre in which doctors, nurses and patients perform their humaneness and humanity. This insight has much to offer at a time when established notions of the human are being radically rethought, partly in response to emerging biomedical knowledge. Performance, Medicine and the Human argues that contemporary medical performance can shed new light on what it means to be human – and what we mean by the human, the humane, humanism and the humanities – at a time when these notions are being fundamentally rethought. Its insights are relevant to scholars in performance studies, the medical humanities, healthcare education and beyond.

Through an examination of examples from performance, museum displays and popular culture that stage the body as a specimen, Performing Specimens maps the relations between these performative acts and the medical practices of collecting, storing and showing specimens in a variety of modes and contexts. Moving from an examination of the medical and historical contexts of specimen display in the museum and the anatomy theatre to contemporary performance, Gianna Bouchard engages with examples from live art, bio-art, popular culture and theatre that stage the performer's body as a specimen. It examines the ethical relationships involved in these particular moments of display – both in the staging and in how we look at the specimen body. This is a landmark study for those working in the fields of theatre, performance and the medical humanities, with a specific focus on the ethics of display and the ethics of spectatorship, emerging at the intersection of performance and medicine. Among the works and examples considered are 18th-century anatomical waxes from the Museo di Storia Naturale la Specola in Florence, Italy, and their contemporary version in the Bodyworlds exhibition of 'plastinated' corpses; organ retention scandals; current legislation, such as the Human Tissue Act 2004; the work of performance company Clod Ensemble and Stein|Holum Projects, the performer and disability activist, Mat Fraser and live artist, Martin O'Brien, alongside visual artists Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy , artists Peggy Shaw and ORLAN.

"A testament to the synergy of two evolving fields. From the study of staged performances to examinations of the performing body in everyday life, this book demonstrates the enormous profitability of moving beyond disability as metaphor. . . . It's a lesson that many of our cultural institutions desperately need to learn." -Martin F. Norden, University of Massachusetts-Amherst This groundbreaking collection imagines disabled bodies as "bodies in commotion"-bodies that dance across artistic and discursive boundaries, challenging our understanding of both disability and performance. In the book's essays, leading critics and artists explore topics that range from theater and dance to multi-media performance art, agit-prop, American Sign Language theater, and wheelchair sports. Bodies in Commotion is the first collection to consider the mutually interpretive qualities of these two emerging fields, producing a dynamic new resource for artists, activists, and scholars.

Interest in the relationships between body structure and function in physical activity has persisted for centuries. Body Composition: Health and Performance in Exercise and Sport advances understanding beyond simple descriptions of body physique and composition of athletes and fills gaps in our understanding of the important role of muscle, fat, and bone in facilitating physical performance and health in sports and physically demanding occupations. lt addresses basic, practical, and applied topics in body composition, performance, and health with comprehensive reviews organized in four logical parts: Body Composition Assessment; Physical Activity and Body Composition; Body Composition in Sports and Occupations; and Moderating Factors. This book integrates state-of-the-art knowledge by international experts in the field and produces an evidence-based practical guide for a balanced understanding of the role and use of body composition assessment in physical performance and health for youth and adults. It also provides a needed link between the practice of body composition assessment and its application by members of public health advisory committees that develop national guidelines for diet, physical activity, and health. This book is suitable for students and professionals in sports nutrition, exercise science, kinesiology, and athletic training. Sport administrators and policy-makers for international and national sport federations and organizations, and national intercollegiate and scholastic federations, would also benefit from this book.

The processing of medical images in a reasonable timeframe and with high definition is very challenging. This volume helps to meet that challenge by presenting a thorough overview of medical imaging modalities, its processing, high-performance computing, and the need to embed parallelism in medical image processing techniques to achieve efficient and fast results. With contributions from researchers from prestigious laboratories and educational institutions, High-Performance Medical Image Processing provides important information on medical image processing techniques, parallel computing techniques, and embedding parallelism in different image processing techniques. A comprehensive review of parallel algorithms in medical image processing problems is a key feature of this book. The volume presents the relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the area and provides detailed descriptions about the diverse high-performance techniques. Topics discussed include parallel computing, multicore architectures and their applications in image processing, machine learning applications, conventional and advanced magnetic resonance imaging methods, hyperspectral image processing, algorithms for segmenting 2D slices for 3D viewing, and more. Case studies, such as on the detection of cancer tumors, expound on the information presented. Key features: Provides descriptions of different medical imaging modalities and their applications Discusses the basics and advanced aspects of parallel computing with different multicore architectures Expounds on the need for embedding data and task parallelism in different medical image processing techniques Presents helpful examples and case studies of the discussed methods This book will be valuable for professionals, researchers, and students working in the field of healthcare engineering, medical imaging technology, applications in machine and deep learning, and more. It is also appropriate for courses in computer engineering, biomedical engineering and electrical engineering based on artificial intelligence, parallel computing, high performance computing, and machine learning and its applications in medical imaging.