Introduction to:

Lecture II

MHA,2015,AAiT

Outline
History and Achievements of
Biomedical Engineering
Definition of Biomedical Engineering
Streams in Biomedical Engineering
What Do BME Students Learn at
AAiT?
Biomedical Engineering Career
Jobs for BME graduates
MHA,2015,AAiT

Introduction
The immense changes that have occurred in the science and practice
of modern medicine originated in many rapid developments in the:
pure sciences (chemistry, physics, physiology, microbiology, etc.) and
applied sciences (engineering, computer science, pharmacology, etc.) since
1900.
The revolutionary discoveries and developments in solid state electronics and
computing are especially noteworthy as drivers of biomedical research and
biotechnology.

They have made possible marvelous advances in such fields as

neuroscience,
prosthetic design,
drug delivery,
monitoring systems,
nuclear medicine, and
medical imaging.

The many challenging problems of biological and medical science

provide great opportunities for biomedical engineers to contribute to
the quality of human life and the overall wellbeing of society.

Introduction
An important contemporary goal of biomedical
engineering is to identify the problems and needs of
research and health care systems that can be solved by
engineering technology and systems methodology, and
thereby to provide advances in basic research and highquality health care at a reasonable cost.
The training of biomedical engineers is challenging
because of the great breadth and depth of knowledge
and experience needed to work across different
disciplines. Biomedical engineers apply electrical,
mechanical, chemical, computing, optical systems, and
other engineering principles to understand, modify,
and/or control biologic systems.

History of Biomedical
Engineering
In its broadest sense, biomedical engineering has been with
us for centuries, perhaps even thousands of years. In 2000,
German archaeologists uncovered a 3,000-year-old mummy
from Thebes with a wooden prosthetic tied to its foot to serve
as a big toe. Researchers said the wear on the bottom surface
suggests that it could be the oldest known limb prosthesis.
Egyptians also used hollow reeds to look and listen to the
internal goings on of the human anatomy.
In 1816, modesty prevented French physician Rene Laennec
from placing his ear next to a young womans bare chest, so
he rolled up a newspaper and listened through it, triggering
the idea for his invention that led to todays ubiquitous
stethoscope.

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History and Golden accomplishments

of Biomedical Engineering
One of the fastest growing fields of technologya
field of astounding recent achievements and even
more ambitious hopesis biomedical engineering.
biomedical engineering today holds a prominent
place as a means of improving medical diagnosis
and treatment, as a business, and as an academic
discipline.
Yet 50 years ago it barely existed.
The story to be told is a large and exciting one, and
not all of it can be told here. This presentation gives
most attention to the aspects of biomedical
engineering

History of BME:

animal electricity

In the 1780s Luigi Galvani, studying

what was called animal electricity,
initiated a line of research known as
electrophysiology.
By 1900 it had established the
electrical nature of the nerve impulse
and its velocity and revealed much
about electrolytic conduction in
animal tissues.

History of BME:

model of blood flow

In 1840 a French physician named J.L.M.

Poiseuille showed that the major pressure drop
in the cardiovascular system occurred in the
capillaries.
He then studied the pressure drop in small
glass tubes and developed the relation
between pressure drop, flow, and tube
diameter.
A theory for wave propagation in elastic tubes
such as blood vessels was developed by
Thomas Young as early as 1808.

History of BME:
The physicist Hermann von Helmholtz may
well be considered one of the first biomedical
engineers. He invented the ophthalmoscope
and the ophthalmometer.
He also determined the velocity of nerve pulse
transmission, and he developed the basic
physics for understanding fields in a volume
conductor produced by bioelectric sources.
he studied the mechanism of hearing and
invented the Helmholtz resonator.

History of BME:
In 1888 Augustus Desir Waller showed that, with a
capillary electrometer, one could record the
changing heart voltages from the body surface.
X-ray imaging, invented by Wilhelm Rntgen in
1895, had an enormous impact on medicine;
in 1896 Siemens and General Electric began selling
X-ray equipment.
it has been argued that it was X-ray technology that
triggered the transformation of the hospital from a
passive receptacle for the sick poor to an active
curative institution for all members of society.

History of BME:

research

the electrocardiograph and the electroencephalograph, the former

coming into clinical use in the 1920s, the latter in the 1930s.
Devices such as thermocouples, galvanometers, and phototubes
found many applications in biomedical research in the 1930s.
An example of biomedical research indebted to engineering both for
concepts and instrumentation is the work of Edward D. Adrian and
Charles Sherrington, recognized by the 1932 Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine, for elucidating the electrical nature of
neural activity.
Triggers:
biomedical application stimulated the technological advance, as with the
string galvanometer invented by Willem Einthoven to improve
electrocardiography (ECG).
the differential amplifier, a basic component of electronics, which was
invented by B.H.C. Matthews in 1934 to amplify action potentials of nerves.

History of BME:
Devices to
deliver
electric shock
for
Believe It...Or
Not!
therapeutic
purposes
were popular
In the late 18th
century
through the
Early 20th
century.
Left: For
women, an ad
for an electric
corset
(circa 1885)
proposed cures
for ailments

History of BME:
Diathermyis the controlled production of "deep heating"
beneath the skin in the subcutaneous tissues, deep muscles
and joints for therapeutic purposes.
It was during World War I that the manufacture of electron
tubes (mainly for radio) began on a large scale, and
beginning in the 1920s electron tubes permitted short-wave
diathermy, new types of electrosurgery, and medical
applications of telemetry.
Short-wave diathermy began in Europe in about 1925 and
was used to treat a variety of ailments;
microwave diathermy began after World War II when the
klystron(linear-beam vacuum tube) and the magnetron(highpowered vacuum tube) became available to investigators.

History of BME:
Electron-tube amplification was put to work in a commercial
ECG machine introduced by Siemens & Halske in 1921;
It was the highly sensitive string-galvanometer of Einthoven,
rather than electron-tube amplification, that made possible
the first recording of brain waves from scalp electrodes.
This electroencephalography or EEG, was developed by the
German psychiatrist Hans Berger in the mid 1920s,
Clinical EEGs evolved in the 1930s and expanded quickly in
the early 1940s.
It was also in the early 1940s that the field of
electrocorticography multichannel recordings from the
exposed brain cortexemerged; it was used to locate
epileptic foci.

History of BME:
One of the most important tools of 20th-century
biomedical research, the electron microscope, was
invented at the beginning of the 1930s by two German
groups independently, one at the University of Berlin
headed by Hans Hermann Knoll and Ernst Ruska and the
other at Siemens-Schuckert headed by Reinhold
Rdenberg.
This was the transmission electron microscope, in which
the electrons used to form the image passed through the
sample.
Knoll proposed a scanning electron microscope, in which
the electrons were reflected off the sample, and an early
form was built by Manfred von Ardenne in 1938.

History of BME:
Radiology was no doubt the most highly developed
application of engineering to medicine.
Technical advances included improved X-ray tubes,
notably the high-vacuum hot-cathode tube developed by
William Coolidge at General Electric in 1913, and means
of visualizing soft tissues.
It had been discovered around the turn of the century
that ingestion of radio-opaque bismuth compounds made
parts of the digestive tract visible in X-ray images,
in the late 1920s Portuguese investigators, including
Egas Moniz and dos Santos, developed angiography, the
X-ray visualization of blood vessels after injection of a
radio-opaque substance.

History of BME:
Sonar, invented near the end of World War I for
detecting submarines, became an important
military technology, and in the 1940s attempts
were made to adapt the technique to medical
imaging.
In 1941 Donald Sproule developed a pulse-echo
ultrasonic instrument;
one transducer generated the pulses and a second one
registered the echoes in the intervals between the
generated pulses.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the technique reached

clinical usefulness.

History of BME:
important contribution of chemical engineers in the
1950s was in the processing of blood, such as techniques
for fractionating blood plasma.
Engineering contributed to cardiology in numerous ways.
Attracting the most attention was the cardiac pacemaker.
In 1952 Paul M. Zoll, working with engineers of the
Electrodyne Company, developed an external
pacemaker, which stimulated the heart through large
electrodes placed on the chest wall.
Having an even greater impact was the defibrillator. Here
too, Paul Zoll was a pioneer; he performed the first
human transthoracic defibrillations in 1955.

History of BME:
Another great advance for cardiology in this
decade was the heart-lung machine, which
provided a mechanical substitute, during
cardiac surgery, for heart and lungs and
thus made open-heart surgery a possibility.
In 1953 John H. Gibbon used such a device,
developed with the assistance of IBM
engineers, and later C. Walton Lillehei and
Richard DeWall developed an improved
heart-lung machine.

History of BME:
The electronic digital computer, just then becoming a
practical device, was applied to cardiology in the late
1950s by Hubert Pipberger and his colleagues for
automatic analysis of the ECG.
The related field of EEG, too, saw important
advances. For example, in 1959 MIT professor Walter
Rosenblith and his colleagues published Processing
Neuroelectric Data, which described work on aver
aging of evoked responses, the use of correlation
techniques and power spectra for the EEG, statistical
models for neuroelectric phenomena, and the use of
digital computers for the processing of data.

History of BME:
X-ray imaging advanced as fluoroscopic image
intensifiers came onto the market.
In these devices, based ultimately on a patent issued to
Irving Langmuir in 1934, Xrays strike a screen,
triggering the release of electronics, which are
accelerated and strike phosphors at the end of the tube.
By the 1960s these image intensifiers permitted a
radiation dosage of a tenth or a hundredth of what was
used before to acquire the same diagnostic information.
The specialized technique of mammography began to
be developed.

History of BME:
One of the most significant events of the decade was
the development of automatic chemical analyzers.
In 1956 Leonard T. Skeggs Jr. invented an automatic
analyzer, which could carry out ten different tests on
a single substance and could analyze 5,000
substances daily.
Technicon introduced its Auto Analyzer in 1957, and
by 1960 most large hospitals in the United States
were using it.
This device allowed a hundred fold increase in the
number of laboratory tests over a ten-year period,
and in the mid 1980s, some 50,000 were in use.

History of BME:
A new imaging technology attracted much
attention: ultrasound imaging.
Ultrasound had been used for therapeutic purposes
(mainly in physical therapy but also to treat cancer)
in the 1920s and 1930s, and in the 1940s pulsed
reflected ultrasound was used in industry to detect
flaws in materials and construction.
In the late 1940s and 1950s a number of groups in
various countriesJapan, Austria, France, and the
United States among thempioneered in creating
medical images using ultrasound.

History of BME:
In the early 1970s it was believed there was a crisis in health care in the
United States, with costs out of control and performance unsatisfactory in
many areas.
Biomedical engineering was seen as both part of the problemfor raising
the costs of health careand part of the solutionby improving health care.
The high cost of medical technology was brought forcefully to U.S. public
attention at the beginning of the decade, when the media made public the
way patient selection for dialysis was being carried out in Seattle.
In 1972 Congress agreed to meet the cost of dialysis for every patient
considered likely to benefit.
Costs soon far exceeded the original estimates; the 1983 cost to the
government for providing dialysis was $2.2 billion. This created alarm, as it
was thought that other technologies that were both effective and costly
would soon become available.
Before long this indeed happened with CT scans, coronary bypass surgery,
and heart and liver transplants.

History of BME:
The 1970s stand out for the development of new
techniques of medical imaging.
Attracting the most attention was computerized
tomography (CT), which uses X-ray machines and
computers to generate cross-sectional images.
Important work done in the 1970s included two
papers by Allan Cormack on a scanning method
that projected gamma rays through an object on
a rotating platform and a prototype transmission
CT scanner built by David Kuhl and Roy Edwards
in Philadelphia

History of BME:
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, which
takes advantage of the fact that different chemical
elements respond differently in magnetic fields,
began in the mid 1970s.
A contributing factor was advances in magnet
technology, since high-intensity fields are necessary
for high-resolution images.
In 1972 Raymond Damadian applied for a patent on
an NMRApparatus and method for detecting cancer
in tissue, and in 1973 Paul C. Lauterbur published a
paper in Nature that presented a method for
forming a 2-D NMR map.

History of BME:
Positron emission tomography (PET), which forms
images from the positrons emitted by radioactive
chemicals injected into, or swallowed by, a patient,
made its commercial debut in 1977.
A group head by Michael Ter-Pogossian at Washington
University in St. Louis built a positron imaging device
in 1972, and Ter-Pogossian and Michael Phelps
published a paper on their system of PET in 1975.
This new imaging technology was not, however,
adopted as rapidly as CT imaging: at the end of the
decade only about 40 institutions had set up PET
centers.

History of BME:
In 1970 was the first successful use of a totally
implanted standby defibrillator (by J.C. Schuder and
co-workers).
A rechargeable cardiac pacemaker was marketed
from 1973 to 1978, and it was successfully used in
hundreds of patients, and
at about the same time a nuclear-powered
pacemaker was developed. The introduction of the
lithium battery into pacemaker use by Wilson
Greatbatch, however, led to the discontinuation of
the manufacture of both rechargeable and nuclear
pacemakers.

History of BME:
One example of a successful product was DuPonts ACA
(Automatic Clinical Analyzer), introduced in 1970.
The ACA was designed for specialty and emergency tests,
as well as small batches of routine tests.
It thus complemented the large batch analyzers already
available in many hospitals, providing automation in small
hospitals, clinics, and group practices.
Also in 1970 Beckman Instruments introduced an
automatic glucose analyzer, which soon became standard
worldwide for measurement of glucose in biological fluids
such as blood, and the next year Beckman introduced an
automatic urea nitrogen analyzer.

History of BME:
There also were significant attempts to make computer-based expert
systems.
In 1972 a group at the University of Pittsburgh headed by Jack D. Myers
devised the program INTERNIST-I for clinical decision making.
This and later versions were of educational value to clinical practitioners
as well as medical students.
In 1973 Edward Shortcliffe and collaborators published a description of
MYCIN, an expert system to aid physicians in the selection of antibiotics.
Shortcliffe had captured specialist knowledge in the form of heuristic
rules.
In 1979 MYCIN performed well in a clinical evaluation of its accuracy,
but it was never used in practice.
The high level of activity in hospital administration systems, laboratory
information systems, expert systems, and so on led to recognition of a
field of medical informatics.

History of BME:
In 1980 Harold Swan and William Gantz introduced
balloon-tipped catheters for clinical use (earlier
Andreas Gruentzig had introduced a stiff-walled
angioplasty catheter), and the opening up of blood
vessels using such catheters, known as balloon
angioplasty, soon became common
A major advance of the 1980s was endoscopy,
sometimes called keyhole surgery, which came to
be widely practiced.
Tiny instruments could be passed through small
tubes inserted in the body either through natural
openings or incisions.

History of BME:
Surgery benefited greatly from the use of lasers.
At the begining of the decade the applications were limited,
and most employed one of three continuous-wave lasers.
At the end of the decade there were a great many medical
applications, and these used a variety of pulsed and
continuous-wave lasers.
Among the new applications were pulse-dye lasers for
fragmentation of kidney stones, exciter lasers for reshaping
the cornea, pulse-dye lasers for the treatment of port-wine
stain, and argon-pumped pulse-dye lasers for treatment of
cancer.
Lasers could be used in endoscopy, such as the laser catheter
for cleaning arteries of plaque made by Trimedyne Inc. that
received FDA approval in 1987.

History of BME:
A momentous advance of the 1980s was the adoption of MRI.
In 1984 the FDA gave approval to four companies to market
MRI machines.
At the beginning of the decade, superconducting solenoids, to
achieve higher field strengths, were introduced, and in 1987
techniques for extremely rapid MRI made it possible to create a
movie of a beating heart.
PET, which, as we saw, was introduced the previous decade,
became more widely used.
The technique was especially valuable because it could chart
metabolic processes. But the cost of PET scanning remained so
high that it was used almost exclusively for research. The use
of smaller cyclotrons contributed to lowering the cost, which in
1988 was one-third of what was it was five years earlier.

History of BME:
The Human Genome Project was perhaps the most
prominent scientific and technological effort of the
1990s. With the objective of learning the entire
sequence of human DNA,
Robotics, here and in countless other areas of
biomedicine, attracted considerable attention.
A survey at the beginning of the decade found
approximately 400 applications of robotics to medicine.
One area was the laboratory.
For example, a lab robot (a modified Tecan Robotic Sample
Processor) was used to culture and harvest bone marrow,
lymph nodes, fibroblasts, and other tissues.

History of BME:
The largest area for medical robotics was in rehabilitation: tactile
sensors (as used in the Utah-MIT dextrous four-finger hand),
prosthetics (such as the artificial arm), orthotics, assistive devices
for the blind (as the Japanese (MITI) project MELDOG, designed to
provide the functions of a guide dog), and systems for
rehabilitation after surgery (as continuous-passive-motion
machines).
In surgery there are some robots that assist surgeons (such as for
stereotactic neurosurgery) and some that perform surgery
themselves (such as a robot to perform prostatectomies).
On 25 March 1991 at Shaftesbury Hospital in London, a surgical
robot SARP (Surgical Assistant Robot for Prostatectomy), under
computer control, carried out an operation for the first time.
And in 1993 the FDA authorized clinical testing of a robotic
surgical procedure for implanting artificial hips.

History of BME:
Providing alternatives to artificial materials in therapy is
the objective of the newly emerging field of tissue
engineering or cell therapy.
Among the products under development in the 1990s
were the following: cell-based skin substitutes for wounds;
corneal grafts to restore vision; transplanted cells for
bone, cartilage, and ligament repair; transplants in or near
the brain and spinal cord for treating neurodegenerative
disease; pancreas substitution systems for diabetics; liver
assist devices for hepatic failure; and tubular structures
for repair of blood vessels, ureters, and fallopian tubes.
Such tissue-engineering products were entering clinical
trials in the late 1990s.

History of BME:
Medical imaging advanced again: in 1998 the General Electric
digital detector Revolution made its medical debut in the Full Field
Digital Mammography System introduced in Europe.
Unlike other digital X-ray devices that pieced together a large
image from small ones, the GE system created a single image at
once.
Magnetic resonance imaging made important advances.
A number of techniques were developed to decrease MRI
acquisition times, such as turboflash developed by Siemens and
fast SPGR and fast spin-echo developed by GE; these methods
made possible complete scans in only a few minutes.
A major new technique was introduced in 1991: using MRI to map
human brain activity by observing changes in cortical blood
oxygenation called functional MRI (fMRI), it has since become a
major methodology in brain science and other areas of research.

History of BME:
Medical imaging attained even more
prominence through the Visible Human
Project, a digital depiction of every millimeter
of the cadaver of a human (the first digital
human being), which went online 29
November 1994.
This representation of anatomy has
contributed to highly realistic simulation
systems used to train physicians in
bronchoscopy, arthroscopy, venipuncture, and
other procedures.

History of BME:
Medical devices in general continued to improve.
Some new products of the 1990s were the
tympanic or ear thermometer, introduced in
1991, which measured infrared heat from the
eardrum and surrounding tissue, and
the intra-arterial blood-gas monitoring system
determined in real time the hydrogen-ion
concentration and partial pressures of oxygen
and carbon dioxide (instead of determiningthese
quantities from blood samples taken at
infrequent intervals).

History of BME:
The individual achievements of biomedical engineering have been
astounding.
Exploratory surgery is almost a thing of the past, having been replaced
by medical imaging.
Tissue engineering has made great advances, including the creation of
synthetic structures that the body recognizes as its own and the growth
of a patients own tissue in vitro for later transplantation back into his
body.
Microelectronics has been used to restore some control over paralyzed
limbs.
Cochlear implants allow the profoundly deaf to hear well enough to
carry on a conversation.
Artificial silicon retinas have been implanted in the eyes of blind
patients.
Computer-based simulators are beginning to be used in surgical
training. And many other important achievements might be named.

History of BME:
Controversy, too, has increased the prominence of
medical technology.
It has been blamed for the huge increases in healthcare costs.
It has been criticized for dehumanizing medical care,
as patients confront machines in the hospitals and
receive computerized bills and health records.
Some people have objected to the use of animals in
research.
And new technologies have raised new ethical issues,
such as what measures should be taken to prolong
life.

History of BME:
In prospect are advances that will increase still further the role
of biomedical engineering.
Natural organs may be regrown after injury or disease.
Molecular nanotechnology may provide microscopic means for
targeted delivery of medications.
An all-inclusive lifelong health record (text, images,
instrumental readings, and so on), under control of the
patient, may be readily accessible.
Precise understanding of genetic defects may permit more
effective treatment by conventional means, and gene transfer
may alleviate or correct problems resulting from genetic
defects.
Treatment at a distance, especially treatment in the home,
may become common.

In the Future of BME:

Bionanotechnology
Stem Cells
Genetic Engineering
Tissue Engineering

What is biomedical Engineering?

Biomedical engineering integrates physical,
chemical, mathematical and computational
sciences and engineering principles to study
biology, medicine, behavior, and health.
Apply knowledge of engineering, biology, and
biomechanical principles to the design,
development, and evaluation of biological and
health systems and products, such as artificial
organs, prostheses, instrumentation, medical
information systems, and heath management
and care delivery systems.
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What do biomedical
engineers do?
Perhaps a simpler question to answer is what dont
biomedical engineers do? Biomedical engineers work
in industry, academic institutions, hospitals and
government agencies. Biomedical engineers may
spend their days designing electrical circuits and
computer software for medical instrumentation.
These instruments may range from large imaging
systems such as conventional x-ray, computerized
tomography (a sort of computer enhanced threedimensional x-ray) and magnetic resonance imaging,
to small implantable devices, such as pacemakers,
cochlear implants and drug infusion pumps.

What do biomedical
engineers do?
Bioengineers help translate
human organs such as the
heart into thousands of
mathematical
equations and millions of data
points which then run as
computer simulations. The
result is a visual simulation
that looks and behaves
much like the real heart it
mimics.

What do biomedical
engineers do?
Wearable computers can play a role
in making health care delivery
possible for anyone, anyplace,
anytime.

Biomedical Engineers in
Ethiopia:
Design and manufacture products that can
monitor physiologic functions or
display anatomic detail

Detection, measurement, and monitoring of physiologic signals

biosensors
biomedical instrumentation
Medical imaging

Assist in the diagnosis and treatment of patients

Computer analysis of patient-related data

clinical decision making
medical informatics
artificial intelligence

Supervise biomedical equipment maintenance technicians,

Investigate medical equipment failure,
Advise hospitals about purchasing and installing new equipment
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Achievements of Biomedical
Engineering
Optical lens
1666, Newton
1850-, ophthalmoscope, Helmholtz

Stethoscope
1819, hollow tube
1851, binaural stethoscope

X-ray
1895, Roentgen
1896, in diagnosis and therapy

Radioactivity
1896, Curie
1903, in therapy

Electrocardiograph
1887, Waller, capillary meter
1903, Einthoven,
galvanometer 1928,
vacuum tube

Electroencephalograph 1924, Berger

Electrical surgical unit, 1928 MHA,2015,AAiT

Achievements of Biomedical
Engineering
Assisting ventilator
1928, "iron lung"
1945, positive pressure

Ultrasonic imaging
pulse-echo, 1947
Doppler, 1950s

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

NRM, Bloch, Purcell, 1946
MRI, 1982

Computed tomography : 1969, Cormack, Hounsfield

Electrical heart defibrillator
1956, Zoll
1980, implanted

Implanted electrical heart pacemaker :1960, Greatbatch

Heart valves, 1975
Cardiac catheter, 1975
Artificial kidney (dialysis), 1960
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Artificial heart, 1984

MRI

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Streams of BME
Biomechatronics
Aims to integrate mechanical, electrical,
and biological parts together. e.g. sieve
electrodes, advanced mechanical
prosthetics

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Bioinstrumentation
Construction of devices for
measuring aspects of physiological
status
Electrocardiography (ECG),
Electroencephalography (EEG)

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Biomaterials
Development of materials either
derived from biological sources or
synthetic, generally used for medical
applications
Biopolymers, scaffold material for tissue
engineering, coating for transplants

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Biomedical Imaging
Visualization of anatomy and physiology,
essential for modern diagnosis and treatment
X-ray,
computerized tomography (CT) (or computerized
axial tomography(CAT) scan)
Positron emission tomography(PET)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI), fMRI
Ultrasound
Fundus Imaging
OCT

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Biomedical Imaging

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Biosignals ( medical informatics)

Bioinformatics involves developing and using
computer tools to collect and analyze data related to
medicine and biology. Work in bioinformatics could
involve
using sophisticated techniques to manage and search
Databases of gene sequences that contain many millions
of entries.
Signal analysis ( statistics and transform) of biological
signals
Use data to uncover the mechanisms of signal
production, and the fundamental origins of the variability
in the signal.
Data collection and analysis to assist in decision making.
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Biosignals

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Rehabilitation Engineering
Works directly with patients such as
disabled individuals to modifies or
designs new equipment to achieve a
better standard of life.
Orthopedic devices
An orthopedic device is an appliance that
aids an existing function

Prosthetic devices
A prosthesis provides a substitute
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BioMEMS
BioMEMS Microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) are the integration of mechanical
elements, sensors, actuators, and electronics on
a silicon chip. BioMEMS are the development
and application of MEMS in medicine and biology.
Examples of BioMEMS work include:
the development of microrobots that may one day
perform surgery inside the body, and
the manufacture of tiny devices that could be
implanted inside the body to deliver drugs on the
bodys demand.

How do biomedical engineers

differ from other engineers?
Biomedical engineers must integrate biology and
medicine with engineering to solve problems related to
living systems. Thus, biomedical engineers are required
to have a solid foundation in a more traditional
engineering discipline, such as electrical, mechanical or
chemical engineering.
Most undergraduate biomedical engineering programs
require students to take a core curriculum of traditional
engineering courses. However, biomedical engineers are
expected to integrate their engineering skills with their
understanding of the complexity of biological systems in
order to improve medical practice. Thus, biomedical
engineers must be trained in the life sciences as well.

What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?
Basic biology and human physiology
Basic chemistry knowledge and laboratory techniques.
Human biological systems in terms of fundamental
physics and engineering principles
Knowledge of biomaterials, biomechanics and related fields
Latest instrumentation and methodologies in biomedical
engineering
Use computers in a biomedical setting
Research experience in biomedical settings
Practical biomedical engineering experience through jobrelated training, industrial internships, and biomedical
design projects

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Module Names and

Distribution

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

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What do BME students learn at

AAiT?

MHA,2015,AAiT

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
The demand for engineers with backgrounds in
biology and medicine is currently very high and
can be expected to continue to grow substantially
in the near future. Not only will demand for
engineers in biomedical research grow as teambased, quantitative techniques displace the
traditional individual investigator approach, but as
new instruments, devices, and biomaterials find
broad applications in the fields of medicine,
agriculture, food technology, and renewable
resources, biomedical engineering expertise will be
needed to exploit them efficiently.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

MHA,2015,AAiT

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Pharmaceutical Company as a
process engineer: Equipment design, producing new
drug.

Clinical engineering in hospital

Design and construct medical devices such as
cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators, artificial
kidneys, blood oxygenators, hearts, blood
vessels, joints, arms, and legs.
Design computer systems to monitor patients
during surgery or in intensive care.
Graduate School: Researcher
MHA,2015,AAiT

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Design and Build sensors to measure blood
pressure and blood chemistry, such as
potassium, sodium, 02, CO, and pH.
Design instruments and devices for
therapeutic uses, such as a laser system
for eye surgery or a device for automated
delivery of insulin.
Construct and implement
mathematical/computer models of
physiological systems.
MHA,2015,AAiT

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Establish and maintain clinical
laboratories and other units within the
hospital and health care delivery system
that utilize advanced technology.
Design, build and investigating medical
imaging systems based on X-rays
(computer assisted tomography), isotopes
(position emission tomography), magnetic
fields (magnetic resonance imaging),
ultrasound, or newer modalities.
MHA,2015,AAiT

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Design and construct biomaterials and
determine the mechanical, transport, and
biocompatibility properties of implantable
artificial materials.
Implement new diagnostic procedures,
especially those requiring engineering
analyses to determine parameters that
are not directly accessible to
measurements, such as in the lungs or
heart.
MHA,2015,AAiT

Welcome to the department and Happy Learning

MHA,2015,AAiT