IEEE – Region 6 EMBS Event - Session SP7
Tuesday, September 24, 2002, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Biomedicine and Bioengineering - The Future of Medicine
(Organized by IEEE Region 6 Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society)
Fee: No Charge

Co-Organizers: Dr. Christopher Druzgalski, Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, California State University, Long Beach and Mr. Jack K. Iverson, IEEE - Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society, SAC University Liaison.

Region 6, IEEE LAC - Biomedical and Bioengineering=s Academic and Technology Applications Conference 2002 will explore the coming together of medicine, engineering and biology, and how this has changed the way medicine is practiced. Computer-aided surgery, or robotic surgeries including remote surgery, imaging techniques such MRI, CT, PET and other, joint or denture replacement with a computer directed joint or denture matching, optical sensors for the blind, spinal cord bridges, and on miniature level nanotechnology and MEMS and many of other devices are a small part of the biomedical progress. This dynamic progress is the result of the fusion of medicine, engineering and biology, aided by aerospace military technology and the growth in the biological sciences. Biomedical engineering and bioengineering programs exist or are being implemented at many universities with the help of academic partnerships with biotech and other companies throughout the world. IEEE's Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) are professional organizations that are providing leadership in these fields, and are serving as a catalyst for bringing diverse fields of science together to give mankind improved quality and extended life.

Program (Tentative Schedule)

Session AM

9:00 – 9:30. Informal get-together

Cochairs: Dr. David Z. D’Argenio, and Warren S. Grundfest, M.D., FACS

9:30 – 9:50. The Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC , Dr. David Z. D’Argenio, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, USC, Alfred Mann Biomedical Engineering Institute.
The Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC was established in September 1998, with the goal of fostering the development and pre-commercialization of medical devices and other biomedical technologies to improve human health. To accomplish its goal, AMI-USC collaborates with USC faculty from biomedical engineering and other departments to conduct use-directed research aimed at identifying, developing, validating and transitioning to private industry new concepts for use in promoting public health. The resources, infrastructure and in-house expertise of AMI-USC enhance the Biomedical Engineering Department's ability to recruit outstanding biomedical engineering researchers and educators, and provide our students experiences closer to those that they will encounter in the biomedical device and diagnostics industry.

9:50 – 10:10. New Biomedical Engineering Tools and Computer/Software-Aided Surgery, Warren S. Grundfest, M.D., FACS, Chair, Biomedical Engineering / Professor, Electrical Engineering, UC, Los Angeles.
Minimally invasive surgery has revolutionized patient care, decreased the need for large incisions, dramatically reduced hospital stay and improved patient outcome. Current generation instruments are designed without interactive capacity and provide no feedback or sensory information to the user. As minimally invasive surgery evolves, tools that provide haptic feedback, optical diagnostics, and location information must be developed as an integrated system.

10:10 – 10:30. Legal and Ethical Issues in the Engineering of New Biomedical Technologies, Dr. Andrea K. Scott, Consultant, Bioethics and Regulatory Affairs.
This presentation will explain and illustrate by reference to case law or precedent, certain fundamental legal concepts including civil and criminal liability, negligence, strict liability and intellectual property rights. Practical means by which engineers may assess, mitigate and eliminate potential legal exposure will be offered. The meaning, scope and function of bioethics as well as this new field's relevance to engineers involved in the development of new biomedical technologies will be introduced.

10:30 – 10:50. Planetary Protection: Preventing Space Probes from Transporting Microbes to and from the Planets, Mr. Stephen F. Beverburg, Member, Engineering Staff, Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
This talk will be a brief introduction to planetary protection as required by international treaty and NASA policies, as well as how it is performed at JPL with mention of some possible crossover technologies.

10:50 – 11:10. Experiences in Rehabilitation Engineering Education Programs, Dr. Samuel E. Landsberger, Sc.D., Professor, Mechanical Engineering & Kinesiology, Cal State, LA and Director, Rehabilitation Engineering Program, Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.
An educational framework has been created at the Rehabilitation Engineering Program at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center to expose students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds to the field of Rehabilitation Engineering and provide a stimulating, hands-on learning experience. Hands-on Experiences in Rehabilitation Engineering (HERE) has now completed its fourth academic year in partnership with CSULA, a nationally recognized, leading-edge minority education institution. The HERE Program provides direct contact between students and individuals with disabilities in the context of team design projects. Successive projects build upon earlier student work to refine designs for manufacture as potential products to benefit people with disabilities. The HERE program is a problem-based curriculum. The program comprises lectures, reading, site visits and team - based design work to introduce students to the fundamentals of R.E. in the context of direct exposure to human problems. The thesis driving this effort is that students' analytical and creative energies are evoked and focused as they work together in design teams to study and address the needs of individuals with orthopedic disabilities including muscular weakness, spinal cord injury or limb deficiencies. Mentoring and teamwork activities are integral elements of the program. HERE has collaborated with community-based organizations including a highly successful violence prevention program called LA Teens-on-Target (based at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center) as well as senior centers in the surrounding community. Multi-year participation in the HERE program benefits student alumni as they deepen their knowledge, hone design skills and gain teaching experience as they mentor the incoming students. HERE also includes a student outreach effort to high schools and middle schools in disadvantaged communities, employing student mentors to introduce youngsters to the joys of creative engineering.

11:10 – 11:30. Designing and Manufacturing Rehabilitation Systems, Mr. Leonard Zerlin, Sr. Engineer (Retired), Hughes Aircraft.
This presentation will explore the design and manufacture of innovative mechanical devices to aid the handicapped and maintain quality of life for those who must face a life of diminished physical capacities.

11:30 – 11:50. When Engineers and Biologists Work Together, Dr. Larry Baresi, Associate Professor of Biology, California State University, Northridge.
Each spring Biomedical Engineering II is offered as an interdisciplinary course with the goal of acquainting science and engineering students with each other’s methods, skills and abilities. The course is divided into introduction, subject overview, application, analysis, re-evaluation and submission. It was hoped that through this sequence students could familiarize themselves with the evolutionary process of interdisciplinary devise development. This past semester the class divided itself into two groups one working on the development of magnetic spheres for the early identification and treatment of lung cancer while the other worked on the development of devices for male contraception and incontinence. After a couple of weeks each individual gave an informal presentation outlining the direction of their project. This was then followed by presentations where the biologist presented the engineer’s work and the engineers presented the biologist’s work. After each presentation critical discussions were undertaken by all members of the class, and based on these discussions new data was obtained from interviews, library searches, internet searchers and research papers. This material was presented with new proposals being made as older ones were found to be not viable. Through this process, students discovered how difficult it was to present their ideas to others with dissimilar backgrounds and came to understand that each discipline had something to offer.

Break, Wescon Exhibits

Session PM

Cochairs: Dr. Geert W. Schmid-Schonbein and Dr. Brian Rasnow

1.00 – 1:30 A Bioengineering Analysis of Inflammation in the Cardiovascular System, Dr. Geert W. Schmid-Schonbein, Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Whitaker Institute for Biomedical Engineering, UC, San Diego.
Cardiovascular diseases are accompanied by cell activation and non-infectious inflammation. Inflammation is accompanied by mild cell dysfunction but can reach full organ failure. While many proposals seek to minimize inflammation, few serve to understand the origin of inflammation - which will be the topic of this presentation.

1.30 – 1:50 Biomedical Engineering in Pharmaceutical R&D, Dr. Brian Rasnow, Research Scientist, Research & Automation Technologies, Amgen, Inc.
Discovery of new pharmaceuticals (proteins, antibodies or small molecules) involves a tremendous amount of multidisciplinary effort. The critical role biomedical engineers play in the early stages of drug discovery research at Amgen and some of the challenges recent BME graduates face in this industrial setting will be discussed.

1.50 – 2:10 ETDA Vascular ChelationTherapy, Sir Arnold Takemoto, President and Founder, BioImmune, Inc.
The role of heavy metal detoxification in the prevention and/or treatment of heart disease and cancers is paramount for optimum healing or prevention. A clinical study utilizing a unique oral detoxifying concentrate containing true disodium EDTA was utilized as a provocation, detoxifying agent for a sixteen patient clinical trial. Significant quantities of heavy metals were excreted versus each patient's baseline collection. A surprising outcome of the study was the remarkable clinical healing in severe coronary artery disease and increase in brain acuity in patients after the study. Presentation

2.10 – 2:30 Are We Ready for Microwave Hypothermia?, Dr. Boguslaw Kuszta,  ChE Undergraduate Laboratories Director, California Institute of Technology.
The "impossibility" of a microwave hyperthermia results from two paradigms embedded in physics. The first paradigm says that the effective penetration depth for microwaves is of the order of one millimeter or less. The second describes a theoretical limit for focusing of electromagnetic (EM) waves. Both paradigms are not true. Appropriately tailored microwave pulses can effectively penetrate the tissue at the depth of centimeters. Also, there is no limit for focusing of EM radiation, provided that both electromagnetic parameters characterizing the medium: permittivity (e) and permeability (µ) are negative. Theoretical calculations and experiments proved that such an unusual situation is possible in a living tissue.

2.30 – 2:50 Medical Data Transfer via USB Over Ethernet Using TCP/IP, Bob Ward, Brian Gonzales, John Barnett, Ramsey Beaini, CSCE Dept., California State University, Long Beach.
TCP/IP and USB have become standard protocols for use in the computer industry. With the escalating interest in home screening of patients, we will be seeing an increased number of vendors providing home monitoring instrumentation that uses the Internet as its link to the medical professional. This paper will present an overview of the hardware/software considerations necessary to provide Ethernet connectivity via the Universal Serial Bus (USB) focusing on its application in medical instrumentation industry. The paper will further look at the hardware requirements necessary to interface the USB to an embedded processor, which in turn will access the Internet via Ethernet using TCP/IP. The use of several different embedded processors (8051, 68HC12 and ARM) for this application will be discussed as well as its applications.

2.50 – 3:10 Developments in Neurological BME, Dr. Cynthia Husted, Director, Center for the Study of Neurodegenerative Disorders, University of California, Santa Barbara.
A variety of technical developments in central nervous system (CNS) BME will be presented. Macroscopic to microscopic CNS structure and function will be reviewed with results from techniques including in vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging, solid state magic angle NMR spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy of Langmuir monolayers, confocal microscopy of cerebellar slice cultures, atomic force microscopy of brain lipid assemblies and of CNS progenitor cells, and evaporative light scattering HPLC for quantitative analysis. Such developments are increasing our understanding of CNS structure and function and changes in neurodegenerative disorders. An emphasis on myelin structure and demyelination will be presented, though the technical approaches may be applied to other neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury and others.

3:10 - 3:30 Overview of the New Wonder Years of Medical Engineering and Biology, Mr. Jack K. Iverson, IEEE - Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society, SAC University Liaison.
During this presentation, a fifteen-minute video showing teams at biomedical engineering colleges, medical schools, biotech companies and hospitals that will demonstrate orthopedic implants, heart devices (defib implant, pacemakers, etc.), preventing accidents using biomechanics and the use of licensed clinical engineers in hospitals.

3.30 – 3:50 Roundtable Discussion Moderated by Dr. Willis G. Downing, Jr., Professor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, California State University, Northridge, College of Engineering and Computer Science.

3.50 – 4:10 Selected components and subsystems technology issues in medical electronics, and Session Wrap-Up. Dr. Christopher Druzgalski, IEEE Los Angeles Council, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Section.
Current trends in health care delivery systems related to long term patient monitoring, progressive home health care, rapid delivery of health care and enhanced diagnosis at the point of need, such as a battlefield or an accident, or organ/function replacement mechanisms define technological demands and research efforts. In particular, these ever expanding spectrum of diagnostic, therapeutic, or functional (such as tooth implantable cell phone or implantable identity chips) devices and systems place particular demands for passive and active component design, their physical characteristics, reliability and performance. The hybrid and ASIC design are common in a variety of pacemakers, hearing aids, control systems in prosthetic devices from artificial limbs, or systems for stimulation of selected muscles or organs. However, the discrete components often set the design limits.  The presentation will focus on emerging component applications and demand for new developments which will allow to blend medical and engineering advances.


4.10 – 5:00  Informal networking, Wescon Exhibits

 

If you have any comments or questions concerning these sessions, please contact "druz wescon"

or Jack K. Iverson <SeaEagl@aol.com>

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Last revised  "almost daily as needed" in 2002