This volume contains refereed manuscripts prepared from presentations made at the 2ih annual meeting of the International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue (ISOTT). The meeting was held in Hanover, NH, USA, at Dartmouth Medical School, the 3rd oldest medical school in the USA. ISOTT attempts to produce high quality pUblications on cutting edge topics relating to oxygen in living systerns. The goal is to allow contributors to contribute original data, as with a main-stream journal article, but also to voice individual opinions and ideas in a more relaxed scientific forum. The meeting brought together an international group of scientists who share a common interest in the measurement and role of oxygen in living systems. The organizers of ISOTT99 made a special effort to bring together people from industry, medicine, and basic sciences in order to improve the links in the chain of discovery through to application. As a result, this volume contains publications on a range of subjects. There are contributions from companies on modifiers of oxygen carrying capacity (allosteric modifiers of hemoglobin and infusible oxygen carriers or blood substitutes); technical reports on oxygen measurement devices including advances in near-infrared spectroscopy and imaging, oxygen electrodes, magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging, and fluorescence based measurements. There are medically related sections on modifying and measuring tumor oxygenation in order to improve therapy, assessment and interpretation of oxygenation in the central nervous system, and general issues relating oxygen to pathological conditions.
