Foreword

I remember when I was a junior faculty member sitting around with a few orthopedic residents and radiology residents. The radiology residents were complaining how tedious and unimportant their physics training was, while the orthopedic surgeons were complaining how tedious and unimportant their biomechanics training was. One of the radiologist residents then said that biomechanics is the physics of orthopedic surgery. As I become more experienced I have learned and come to understand how important a detailed understanding of physics is to optimize images, understand image artifacts, and synthesize imaging findings, which one has not seen before. However, perhaps more important, not for orthopedic surgeons but for radiologists, is a detailed understanding of biomechanics. As we will see in this issue of Seminars in Musculoskeletal Radiology, and to be developed in a future issue, functional musculoskeletal imaging likely will become the next horizon in orthopedic imaging. Part and parcel with understanding functional imaging is understanding the physiology of the musculoskeletal system; therefore, the importance of this issue. This is one of the issues that clinicians may use only to a minor degree in a daily practice but that does not diminish the importance of this issue but increases it. One has to understand ambulation, altered ambulation, and the effects of physiologic and pathologic stress to understand nearly all the natural histories of musculoskeletal degeneration in both the spine and articulation. For these reasons, Dr. Karasick and I believe that this issue will be read and read again and referenced back to in the future. Therefore, we extend our heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Dr. Towers and his contributors, and a sincere note of appreciation to Dr. Towers, in putting together this excellent issue.