Biomedical Engineering - Introduction to Medical Electronics Applications - Arnold 1995 - 234s






Preface

This book is intended as an introductory text for Engineering and Applied Science Students to the Medical Applications of Electronics. A course has been offered for many years in Cardiff in this arena both in this College and its predecessor institution. A new group, the Medical Systems Engineering Research Unit, was established following the reorganisation of the College. Restructuring and review of our course material and placing the responsibility for teaching this course within the new group led to a search for new material. Whilst we found a number of available texts which were suitable for aspects of our new course, we found a need for a text which would encompass a wide scope of material which would be of benefit to students completing their degree programmes and contemplating professional involvement in Medical Electronics.

Medical Electronics is a broad field. Whilst much of the material which an entrant to medical applications must acquire is the conventional basis of electronics covered by any student of electronics, there are areas of special emphasis. Many of these arise from areas which are increasingly inaccessible to students who necessarily specialise at an early stage in their

education.

The need for diversity is reflected in the educational background and experience of the

authors. Amongst us is a Medical Practitioner who is also a Mechanical Engineer, a Physicist who now works as a Software Engineer, an Electronics Engineer who made the same move, and another Electronics Engineer with some experimental experience in Orthopaedics.

The material which this book attempts to cover starts with an Introduction which hopefully provides some perspective in the subject area. The following chapter provides an introduction to human anatomy and physiology. The approach taken here is necessarily simplified: it is our intention to provide an adequate grounding for the material in the following chapters both in its basic science and the nomenclature which may be unfamiliar to readers with only elementary biological knowledge.


Chapter Three describes the Physics employed in diagnostic techniques. This encompasses basic radiation physics, magnetic resonance and the nature and generation of ultrasound. Chapter 4 discusses the form of some of the basic electronic elements used in Medical Applications. We describe the specialised techniques which are employed and characterise the signals which are likely to be encountered. Special emphasis is attached to issues of patient safety, although these are covered in greater depth in Chapter 8.


The mathematical background for image processing is covered in Chapter 5. This material has been separated from our description of representative diagnostic imaging technologies pre-

sented in Chapter 6. This latter Chapter includes material supplied by Toshiba Medical Systems, whose assistance we gratefully acknowledge.



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