Medical imaging refers to the technology and process of obtaining internal tissue images of the human body or a part of the human body in a non-invasive way for medical treatment or medical research. It contains the following two relatively independent research directions: medical imaging system (medical imaging system) and medical image processing (medical image processing). The former refers to the process of image formation, including the imaging mechanism, imaging equipment, imaging system analysis and other issues; the latter refers to the image has been obtained for further processing, the purpose is either to make the original image is not clear enough to restore, or in order to highlight some of the characteristics of the image information, or the image is to do pattern classification and so on.
As a science, medical imaging belongs to bio-imaging and includes diagnostic imaging, radiology, endoscopy, thermal imaging for medical purposes, medical photography and microscopy. In addition, techniques such as brain wave mapping and magnetoencephalography, which focus on measurement and recording without image presentation, can be considered as another form of medical imaging because the data produced has localization properties (i.e., contains positional information).