Veterinary head and neck imaging

"I can trace my interests in head and neck imaging back to a former teacher and colleague, Dr. Alexander de Lahunta, to whom I dedicate this book. As a student, it seemed like "Dr. D" was always there to teach you something. No matter who you were, he made you feel like he was there specifically for you and the animals-a true paragon of the profession. During my junior year, I recall my oral final examination in Applied Anatomy and the panic I felt as Dr. D stood in front of a light box pointing at a radiograph of a horse's head relentlessly asking me to identify anatomic structures, one after the other. When done, I remember him saying, "Well, you did much better than last semester." I was simultaneously mortified that he remembered me and elated that maybe I could start to understand anatomy. What stands out most to me, however, was that that moment was when I decided to pursue radiology. I did not know if I would be successful, but I had a direction. Since then I have always been fascinated about the morphologic foundation of diseases and how that could be revealed and studied through medical imaging. Several years later, after I completed residency training, I returned to Cornell University as a faculty member and had the privilege of working beside Dr. D for the next decade. It was a tremendous opportunity and privilege to share ideas with him and to continue to learn by reviewing the neuroimaging cases after he performed the autopsies. Some of my fondest memories from my early career is seeing him walk down the hall with one of my radiology reports in his hand. I cringed inside because I knew that he would inform me about some aspect of anatomy that I had yet to learn fully. I would be back in front of that lightbox all over again, but I became a better veterinarian and radiologist for it and would not have changed a moment"--