Dear all, this question is interesting and the topic is really exciting and high current.

Medical images have different modalities: Rx , CT , MRI, PET, SPECT, bioluminescence, etc. (usually exported in DICOM format). Each of these modalities provides information (anatomical , functional, molecular ) complementary to help the specialist to take any conduct or evaluate the therapeutic effect of a treatment . The term used to refer to them is to bioimaging .

The image analysis software requires additional and special facilities.

With them you can move from qualitative to quantitative results and inform about molecular or cellular processes.

These are called "bio-imaging software" [Nature Methods 9 , 666-670 (2012 ) doi : 10.1038/nmeth.2073 ] .

In my opinion the future of modern medicine (personalized medicine) requires the development of methods of bioinformatics, medical informatics. Perhaps these are the concepts that we should use in addition to talking about bioinformatics.

Sorry if I went too far, is that they are interesting topics.

Best regards, Evelio

I have heard many different opinions about that everyone has his own prospective about the term based on his experience and application

MRI considered as bioinformatic application because computer output utilized for determination of anatomical structure of human tissues. (Application of computer in biology is called as bioinformatics)

X-ray images are only photographs, computer is not utilized, so it may not be considered as bioinformatic application.

But what if we use computer-based softwares in the analysis X-Ray images? This should be bioinformatic application!!!

I see that both NMR and X-ray are useful tools in biology.

However, calculating coordinates, etc. is maybe a computational physics task but cannot be considered bioinformatics as there is no bio involved. You would need to extend your analysis to include a biological component. E.g.: you may come up with a smart way to find similar structures/ substructures.

X-ray images are collected on image plates and the resulting frames are analyzed computationally (hkl, for example). To say they are 'only photographs' seems a little reductive...

Either way, bioinformatics tends to refer to things like sequence analysis or microArrays. In both cases, large data sets are computationally analyzed to extract biologically relevant patterns across species, between cell-lines, etc.

Generally speaking crystallography and NMR are not considered bioinformatics; instead, the deep theory of these methods is physics.

Bioinformatics deals with computational analysis of molecules (DNA and protein) in biological system at molecular level....

As X ray and MRI are imaging process, they come under biophysics.

Dear all, this question is interesting and the topic is really exciting and high current.

Medical images have different modalities: Rx , CT , MRI, PET, SPECT, bioluminescence, etc. (usually exported in DICOM format). Each of these modalities provides information (anatomical , functional, molecular ) complementary to help the specialist to take any conduct or evaluate the therapeutic effect of a treatment . The term used to refer to them is to bioimaging .

The image analysis software requires additional and special facilities.

With them you can move from qualitative to quantitative results and inform about molecular or cellular processes.

These are called "bio-imaging software" [Nature Methods 9 , 666-670 (2012 ) doi : 10.1038/nmeth.2073 ] .

In my opinion the future of modern medicine (personalized medicine) requires the development of methods of bioinformatics, medical informatics. Perhaps these are the concepts that we should use in addition to talking about bioinformatics.

Sorry if I went too far, is that they are interesting topics.

Best regards, Evelio