Book excerpt: A panel of world-renowned experts presents a complete course on evaluating and treating patients with back pain, including interventional spinal procedures, spinal imaging, and the clinical evaluation of the spine patient. The authors focus on all the critical spinal procedures, ranging from such traditional methods as selective nerve root blocks, epidural injections, facet injections, sacroiliac joint injections, to such state-of-the art techniques as spinal biopsy, percutaneous vertebroplasty, spinal imaging, nucleoplasty, discography, intradiscal electrothermal therapy, and transcatheter therapy for tumors of the spine. Additional material is provided on basic spinal anatomy, CT, MRI, the nuclear medicine of the spine, and the pharmacology of the medications used in injection procedures.