It gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity to write a Foreword for this new book. In the past two decades we have witnessed very significant advances in the management of the very ill patient. The great success in this field of medical endeavour is largely due to the establishment of intensive care units, but a great deal of progress can also be attributed to the major developments in technology, which affect patient management and care as well as the many sophisticated techniques of diagnosis and patient monitoring. Imaging and Labelling Techniques in the Critically III covers this new important and difficult field of diagnosis and visual monitoring. By establishing the criteria and algorhythms for the choice of the different methods available for this purpose, defining the diagnostic signs on images and resolving some of the mis­ conceptions and pitfalls, this book will go a long way to help the reader, particularly those involved in the care of patients in the intensive care units. This book brings together many different methods of investigation and discusses the advantages and limitations of these techniques in different clinical circumstances. Some of the techniques are well established and their usefulness in the intensive care unit is in no doubt. Some of the newer techniques such as PET scanning or NMR imaging have not yet found a defined position of usage in the critically ill patient. There is, however, little doubt that in due course this situation will change.