I would like to express my great appreciation to the editors of this volume, Prof. A. De Schepper and Dr. F. Vanhoenacker, for all their efforts and their enthusiastic commitment to this book. I am very grateful to them for managing to involve so many leading experts, resulting in a much -needed high -quality and absolutely up-to-date text­ book on the spleen, an organ which has not always received the attention it deserves from radiologists. As series editor, I am particularly grateful to the volume editors for adhering strictly to the planed schedule. Their punctuality enabled Springer-Verlag to reduce the pro­ duction time of this volume to a minimum. I am very much convinced that this volume on the spleen responds to an important need within the radiological community and that many radiologists will greatly bene­ fit from it. However, surgeons and internal medicine specialists will also be interested in this excellent comprehensive overview of modern radiological imaging of splenic dis­ orders. Leuven ALBERT L. BAERT Preface Not infrequently, the spleen is regarded as the "silent and forgotten" organ of the abdomen. Though primary splenic diseases are rare, the spleen is a frequent site of sec­ ondary manifestations in a wide range of hematological, immunological, oncological, infectious, vascular and systemic disorders. Despite this broad spectrum of splenic dis­ eases, radiological literature on splenic pathology is rather sparse.