Statistical Review of Theses in Iran Public Universities in Medical Imaging Field

Abstract

Introduction: In spite of all the researches on medical imaging, this field is still hot. It is the third major area of research, conducted in the world. Unfortunately, there is no statistical evaluation available of the student theses in Iran. It does not seem like a policy is going to be established to address this issue. Providing a statistical insight to activities done in the past ten years, analysis and classification of the theses in this field are of the research steps of this paper. Materials and Methods: After identifying the research fields of medical imaging, and the study programs and the universities offering them, and filtering as needed, three disciplines of biomedical engineering, medical physics and medical radiation were pinpointed in 16 public universities in Iran consisting of universities of medical sciences and engineering offering the usual bachelor, master’s degree and PHD. After the extraction of the students’ theses titles in those universities, having checked the flow of subjects in years 2006 to 2016, the theses were classified into seven most frequent areas consisting of CT, Ultrasound, MRI, Nuclear, Radiography, Infrared and Software development. Results: Checking the gathered data, the highest number of theses among the three, belong to Biomedical Engineering major. Also, among the 16 universities, most of the titles belong to Amirkabir University of Technology which is considered the of Biomedical engineering center of excellence in the country. If we divide the imaging researches into subsections, we will find out that most of the researches about CT have been conducted in Tehran University of Medical Sciences and about MRI in Tehran University, about Nuclear Imaging and Radiography in Shahid Beheshti University, about Ultrasound in Science and Technology University, and about Software in Tehran University. Also, some theses (mentioned in the software section) have been merely about image processing and not pursuing any biomedical engineering purposes. In addition, among all the different areas of medical imaging, most of the titles have been around MRI. Conclusion: Considering the number of these titles published in different fields, an increase in the number of titles in years 2012 and 2013 is evident. The list of probable reasons behind this rise includes university admissions of students and professors with medical imaging related specialties, scientific and practical backgrounds and equipment availability etc.