Biomedical Application of Signal and Image Processing

Learning Outcomes

Full CEng Programme Level Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Ethical and professional conduct principles are explicitly included in the assignment.
• Additional reading through selection of appropriate technical literature is required to solve complex problems and answer questions in the assignments.
• The formative and summative assessments require the selection of appropriate signal and image collection, processing and analysis techniques for biomedical applications, including understanding of their limitations.
• Independent study skills together with appropriate referencing is required for completion of the assignments.
• The formative and summative assignments are used to assess knowledge and understanding of mathematics, natural science and engineering principles in the solution of complex problems in biomedical signal and image processing. Awareness of the context of these challenges in the wider context of healthcare and biomedical engineering is also assessed.
• The ability to formulate and analyse complex problems and reach substantiated conclusions is developed in lectures and assessed through formative and summative assignments. This requires underpinning mathematical and engineering tools as well as critical analysis and discussion off methods employed.
• The insertion of engineering solutions in the healthcare context is fundamental throughout the module and included in the formative and summative assessments.
• The module includes a number of hands-on computer labs processing recorded biomedical signals and images and the ability to develop computer code to analyse signal and images is tested in the formative and summative assignments.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Some relevant ethical, legal and economic issues.
• The origins and characteristics of some of the most commonly used biomedical signals, including ECG, EMG, evoked potentials, and blood pressure
• The application of signal processing techniques, including digital filtering, coherent averaging, spectral estimation, cross-correlation, input-output modelling with biomedical signals, and the interpretation of results.
• Use of these signals in diagnosis, patient monitoring and physiological investigation.
• Different approaches and options in common biomedical signal processing tasks, such as the estimation of evoked potentials, automatically detecting heart-beats from the ECG, and physiological modelling.
• The physical basis and engineering principles underlying common approaches in acquiring 2D and 3D images for biomedical applications, including x-ray imaging, tomographic techniques, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and ultrasound imaging.
• Sources and characteristics of noise and artefacts in these signals.
• Different analysis techniques used to automatically process and analyse these images, including different image representations, image enhancement and restoration and edge detection, automatic image segmentation and registration.
• Issues of multidisciplinary research and communication at the interface between engineering and medicine/health-care and biology.

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Implement key biomedical signal and image processing tasks in computer programes
• Select and evaluate appropriate signal and image processing methods for specific biomedical applications, and interpret results critically
• Synthesize results, discuss interpretations, and propose alternative algorithms.

Disciplinary Specific Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Implement some signal and image-processing algorithms and interpret the results appropriately.
• Explain how appropriate signal processing methods are being applied to these signals and images for clinical practice and biomedical research, together with the rationale for their use.
• Critically analyse different signal and image processing approaches, identify some of their strengths and limitations, and formulate alternatives.
• Describe the origin and characteristics of some biomedical signals and images.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Discuss technical issues within a multidisciplinary environment.
• Acquire a working knowledge of new software applications and IT resources.
• Read and interpret current research literature and summarise results obtained.
• Implement specified algorithms by computer programming.
• Communicate results, conclusions and problems to health-care professionals (such as clinicians and clinical scientists) with limited mathematical or engineering background.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Assignment

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Individual written feedback on marked assignments; oral feedback in labs, tutorials and during demonstrations; ‘automated’ feedback in programming labs, from error messages and comparing to solutions provided.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.