The physical properties of ultrasound, particularly its highlydirectional beam behaviour, and its complex interactions with humantissues, have led to its becoming a vitally important tool in bothinvestigative and interventional medicine, and one that still hasmuch exciting potential. This new edition of a well-received book treats the phenomenonof ultrasound in the context of medical and biologicalapplications, systematically discussing fundamental physicalprinciples and concepts. Rather than focusing on earliertreatments, based largely on the simplifications of geometricalacoustics, this book examines concepts of wave acoustics,introducing them in the very first chapter.Practical implications of these concepts are explored, first thegeneration and nature of acoustic fields, and then their formaldescriptions and measurement. Real tissues attenuate and scatterultrasound in ways that have interesting relationships to theirphysical chemistry, and the book includes coverage of thesetopics.Physical Principles of Medical Ultrasonics also includescritical accounts and discussions of the wide variety of diagnosticand investigative applications of ultrasound that are now becomingavailable in medicine and biology. The book also encompasses thebiophysics of ultrasound, its practical applications to therapeuticand surgical objectives, and its implications in questions ofhazards to both patient and operator.