Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Curriculum Research Articles

Design and integration of a problem-based biofabrication course into an undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum.

BackgroundThe rapidly evolving discipline of biological and biomedical engineering requires adaptive instructional approaches that teach students to target and solve multi-pronged and ill-structured problems at the cutting edge of scientific research. Here we present a modular approach to designing a lab-based course in the emerging field of biofabrication and biological design, leading to a final capstone design project that requires students to formulate and test a hypothesis using the scientific method.ResultsStudents were assessed on a range of metrics designed to evaluate the format of the course, the efficacy of the format for teaching new topics and concepts, and the depth of the contribution this course made to students training for biological engineering careers. The evaluation showed that the problem-based format of the course was well suited to teaching students how to use the scientific method to investigate and uncover the fundamental biological design rules that govern the field of biofabrication.ConclusionsWe show that this approach is an efficient and effective method of translating emergent scientific principles from the lab bench to the classroom and training the next generation of biological and biomedical engineers for careers as researchers and industry practicians.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13036-016-0032-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Development of concept-based physiology lessons for biomedical engineering undergraduate students

Physiology is a core requirement in the undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum. In one or two introductory physiology courses, engineering students must learn physiology sufficiently to support learning in their subsequent engineering courses and careers. As preparation for future learning, physiology instruction centered on concepts may help engineering students to further develop their physiology and biomedical engineering knowledge. Following the Backward Design instructional model, a series of seven concept-based lessons was developed for undergraduate engineering students. These online lessons were created as prerequisite physiology training to prepare students to engage in a collaborative engineering challenge activity. This work is presented as an example of how to convert standard, organ system-based physiology content into concept-based content lessons.

개선된 학부 의공학 소프트웨어 교육과정을 위한 새로운 과목의 제안

Biomedical engineering is a discipline where engineering principles and techniques are applied to the medical field. Biomedical engineering lies between traditional engineering and medicine and is an inter-disciplinary field in its nature. Current Korean undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum is a simple list of traditional engineering courses combined with basic medical/life science courses. There have been efforts to improve biomedical engineering education to reflect its inter-disciplinary nature. Enhanced software course for biomedical engineering is proposed as a part of effort to overhaul the undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum. In this newly proposed course, students will learn MATLAB and LabVIEW, which are the most widely used software tools in biomedical engineering.

Introduction of therapeutic ultrasound projects into undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum at the George Washington University

Therapeutic ultrasound examples and projects have been successfully incorporated in both formal classes and undergraduate research at the George Washington University. Topics appropriate for various levels of experience and knowledge had to be carefully selected. These included: General demonstrations for summer high school students from local public schools, well‐defined sophomore research projects, and finally capstone projects that focus on device design and development. Demonstrations of therapeutic ultrasound ranged from application of high‐intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to make precise holes in plastic containers and cook meat (showing thermal effects), to production of water fountains (showing streaming effects) and production of dancing (standing wave pattern) bubbles that outline the shape of focus (showing cavitation effects). While very entertaining for younger students, these demonstrations also allow an explanation of basic ultrasound theory and potential clinical applications. Some examples of sophomore research in the therapeutic ultrasound area are: Ultrasound‐enhanced delivery of ocular antibiotics, HIFU treatment of deep seated tumors, and studying effects of the presence of air or bone in the post‐focal HIFU region. Examples of capstone projects include: Portable ultrasound driving system, cooling system for HIFU transducers, robotic HIFU control, flow phantom for testing of ultrasound‐guided HIFU treatments, and system for measurements of ultrasound powers.

The Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Curriculum: Devices and Instruments

In this document, we look at how the study of devices and instruments fits into the undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) curriculum. Our goal is to review the current state of BME curricula in this area and to delineate the core topics that all biomedical engineering students should understand. These include how modern biology and clinical medicine can be integrated in this aspect of biomedical engineering; how biomedical engineering science topics underpin this area of specialization, and what critical skills in this area should be gained by all undergraduate biomedical engineering students. To fully understand this area we must begin with a definition of what is included when we consider devices and instrumentation. Medical devices refer to hardware, and in the broadest sense refer to that hardware that is used in understanding, assessing, manipulating, and treating living things. Medical devices can cover a very broad range such as from tongue depressors and cotton tipped applicators through heart valves and complex machinery such as cardiopulmonary bypass systems or MRI imagers. Needless to say this is a very expansive definition and could cover most of the BME field. For the purpose of this document we will limit our definition of devices to be those components that are covered by the FDA Medical Devices Act of 1976 and are applied in some direct way to living organisms. The biomedical instrument is a special subclass of device that is used to make measurements of biologic or medical quantities and give quantitative (or sometimes qualitative) results of this measurement. In considering the devices and instruments aspects of the BME curriculum, we will not cover those areas that are major subcategories of biomedical engineering themselves such as medical imaging devices, artificial organs, and signal processors since these are covered elsewhere.

Educational Methods and Best Practices in BME Laboratories1

Biomedical engineering (BME) is a practical discipline and laboratory courses that teach the practice of this discipline are an integral component of an effective undergraduate curriculum. Laboratory courses provide students with the opportunity to observe how the physical world compares to the quantitative descriptions of that world taught in the classroom. They also should provide students with the skills necessary for enhancing our descriptions of the physical world, for developing the tools required to interact with that world on a variety of scales, for designing experiments to accomplish these goals and for effectively communicating the results of these experiments. The purpose of this document is to outline the critical components of an effective BME laboratory curriculum and teaching methodologies most appropriate for delivering the content of that curriculum. The content is based upon a white paper submitted in advance of the second Biomedical Engineering Education Summit (BEES II) sponsored by the Whitaker Foundation, and on the discussions that occurred at that summit. BME is a broad discipline that integrates knowledge from the physical, chemical, and engineering sciences for application to the study of biology and medicine. The challenge in developing an undergraduate BME curriculum is determining how to provide students with the breadth required to understand the interdependence of these disciplines as well as the depth necessary to apply the acquired knowledge throughout their careers. Laboratory courses can provide hands-on exposure to the practice of BME. However, because of limited time and resources, it is not possible to cover the tools and techniques spanning the entire field in any undergraduate curriculum. Hence, it is imperative that laboratory courses deliver a foundation to support the skills