To recognize and immediately treat or to early rule out severe illness is a basic duty of emergency medicine. Like point of care biomarkers, especially bedside, imaging techniques may play a substantial role to cope with this task. In times of increasing pressure on emergency physicians to deliver faster and better results, rational use of imaging techniques at the very first minutes and hours from the time of admission is the focus of interest not only to improve outcome and respectively decrease morbidity and mortality, but also for economic reasons.

Emergency medical care depends on closest interactions between a variety of clinical specialties and professions. It has to be closely connected to preclinical and outpatient care and networking hospitals. Consequently, methods of safe and fast data transfer are of utmost importance to insure adequate medical expertise even in regions far off any medical infrastructure.

Therefore, this special issue will become an international forum for researchers to summarize their most recent developments and ideas in the field of emergency imaging and image transfer with a special emphasis given to the technical and observational results obtained within the last five years. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Prehospital imaging
• ED imaging
• Critical care imaging
• Implementation of imaging guidelines
• Critical appraisal of existing imaging guidelines and algorithms
• Articles of unique imaging strategies
• Education and training programs for diagnostic imaging techniques for ED personnel
• Tele imaging
• Information management in emergency management