How can I learn image processing in a practical way?
The book you mention in your question is a highly practical one. In fact since digital image processing (DIP) is by definition an applied field, any book on DIP must be and will be practical. They should be showing results of algorithms on images. But if you mean actual code, very little number of DIP books would give away anything other than pseudo or matlab / octave code.

In my opinion the preferred language for research in DIP is Matlab / Octave or Python, and the standard tool for production environment is C/C++ with MSVS (licence) or a number of excelent free alternatives.

Note that pattern recognition and medical image processing are two sub-fields of signal processing and image processing respectively. The former subject requires a lot of statistics and probability theory background, which is not included in a typical DIP book.