Medical imaging education in biomedical engineering..
Medical Imaging is a key training component in Biomedical Engineering programs. Medical imaging education is interdisciplinary training, involving physics, mathematics, chemistry, electrical engineering, computer engineering, and applications in biology and medicine. Seeking an efficient teaching method for instructors and an effective learning environment for students has long been a goal for medical imaging education. By the support of NSF grants, we developed the medical imaging teaching software (MITS) and associated dynamic assessment tracking system (DATS). The MITS/DATS system has been applied to junior and senior medical imaging classes through a hybrid teaching model. The results show that student’s learning gain improved, particularly in concept understanding and simulation project completion. The results also indicate disparities in subjective perception between junior and senior classes. Three institutions are collaborating to expand the courseware system and plan to apply it to different class settings.
INTRODUCTION :-
Biomedical engineering (BME) education has developed as an interdisciplinary engineering training area in the last 30 years. Based on the current ASEE College Profiles [1], BME undergraduate enrollment has become one of the most rapidly growing engineering majors (undergraduate enrollment has tripled from 1999 to 2010). As a key component in BME, medical imaging, combining physics, mathematics, electrical and computer engineering, provides students with a broad view of an integration of different technologies applied to biology and medicine. Recognizing the broad impact of medical imaging education on BME students, many institutions have established such a curriculum. Based on the Whitaker Foundation’s BME program database [2], there are 119 universities or colleges that have BME programs in the nation. Through the Internet, we surveyed these 119 universities or colleges and found that 80 of them offered graduate level medical imaging courses, and 68 offered undergraduate level medical imaging courses. We must acknowledge that the survey (in 2010) was based on the Internet available and accessible information and it may not be the most accurate or updated. However, it clearly presents a progressively increasing signal of the BME *Research supported by National Science Foundation grants DUE0127290, DUE0632752 and DUE1022750. W. Zhao, corresponding author, is with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA .....X. Li, H Chen, and F. Manns are with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33146 USA. program and its key component, medical imaging. Medical imaging techniques are now crucial in clinical and research laboratories. Medical imaging also opens career opportunities for students in areas of medical equipment or instrument manufacturing, image or signal software engineering, or even medical physics after further training. Medical imaging knowledge includes physics principles, mathematical derivations, and engineering implementations from signal detection and measurement to 2D or 3D reconstructions. A comprehensive discussion for undergraduate medical imaging education has been published [3]. The discussion concluded that “Resources available on the Internet, coupled with effective curricular elements such as challenge-based learning with a mix of team and individual assignments and formative assessment, make it possible for institutions without extensive imaging expertise or equipment to offer effective curricula for biomedical imaging education.” To deliver the knowledge to students efficiently or create an environment for student learning effectively has been investigated. The practices have been heavily focused on Internet/web-based education (a major subcomponent of the broader term “e-learning”) because education through the Internet makes it possible for more individuals than ever to access knowledge and to learn in new and different ways. Efforts have been made in different aspects, such as image reconstruction techniques varying from the physics-based [4], to the math-intensive [5,6], to algorithm efficiency and to image quality improvement [7]. However, limited efforts actually describe, step-by-step and interactively, the process of generation of image data, which is the fundamental education component of medical imaging. On the other hand, while utilizing Internet’s accessibility, the Internet’s tracking capability, as an assessment tool, is usually neglected too. In our BME curriculum, we have established a four-course sequence for imaging training from junior to graduate levels. In the last few years, we have developed an Internet accessible, interactive, module-based medical imaging teaching system and a dynamic assessment tracking system. Both systems are inherently integrated together, specifically featuring interactive animation, simulation and providing simultaneous feedback. In this report, we present the design and implementation of the systems and the results applied to junior and senior imaging classes.
APPLICATIONS OF MEDICAL IMAGING:- Medical imaging technologies widely applicable to both clinical and basic science research are crucially important to the biomedical engineering field. Teaching medical imaging becomes a key component in biomedical engineering education. For undergraduate students who learn medical imaging technologies, however, the "classroom-only" teaching style suffers from many limitations that make it difficult for students to gain a complete understanding of a particular system. We developed a new medical imaging curriculum by associating a series of courses with 1) on-site lecturing in research and clinical laboratories and 2) a set of Internet accessible imaging simulation tutorial programs, and formed an integrated teaching program. This program provides students with medical imaging knowledge in live, effective and interactive formats.