The "NATO Advanced Research Workshop on radiation detectors for medical imaging," held in Alushta (Crimea, Ukraine) in September 2005 was a unique event and I am very pleased that the proceedings are published in the prestigious NATO Security Through Science series. Since their discovery by Becquerel and Rontgen, radiation and radiation detectors have played an ever more important role in medical diagnostics and therapy. The spirit of such NATO workshops is to give an overview of the present state of the field, rather than to bring the latest research results. We have been very lucky to have...

The "NATO Advanced Research Workshop on radiation detectors for medical imaging," held in Alushta (Crimea, Ukraine) in September 2005 was a unique event and I am very pleased that the proceedings are published in the prestigious NATO Security Through Science series. Since their discovery by Becquerel and Rontgen, radiation and radiation detectors have played an ever more important role in medical diagnostics and therapy. The spirit of such NATO workshops is to give an overview of the present state of the field, rather than to bring the latest research results. We have been very lucky to have...

I have been teaching courses on experimental techniques in nuclear and particle physics to master students in physics and in engineering for many years. This book grew out of the lecture notes I made for these students. The physics and engineering students have rather different expectations of what such a course should be like. I hope that I have nevertheless managed to write a book that can satisfy the needs of these different target audiences. The lectures themselves, of course, need to be adapted to the needs of each group of students. An engineering student will not qu- tion a statement...