Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering draws upon a number of key multidisciplinary strengths across Engineering and the Environment, related to the diagnosis, treatment and/or monitoring of human disease.

Overview

Research

Education

Enterprise

Facilities

As a cross-cutting theme, our interests span multiple research groups both within the Engineering and the Environment and outside.

We have very strong links with industry, clinicians and health scientists, particularly in Medicine, Health Sciences and Biological Sciences at the University and at Southampton General Hospital. These links underpin our focus on developing novel biomedical devices and technologies aimed at improving healthcare.

Our work in this area is mirrored by the Biomedical Engineering Network in BioXneT, an initiative to support all bioengineering activities in Engineering and the Environment.

Our research interests within the Biomedical Engineering theme are categorised according to the following clinical diseases and disorders

cancer
cardiovascular disease
hearing
movement
lung disease
neurophysiology
orthopaedics
rehabilitation

Within these categories, we have expertise in black-box and bio-chemo-physics based model development; computational design search and optimisation; computational modelling; control; experimental methods; high performance computing; image and signal processing; imaging; mathematical modelling; microfluidics; and system identification. Many of these areas of expertise focus on clinical applications in

monitoring, diagnostics and treatment/enhancement (e.g. bone fragility, hearing, movement)
therapeutics and treatment (e.g. cancer, lung)
implants (e.g. cardiovascular, cochlear, orthopaedic)
instrumentation (e.g. movement, neurophysiology)

Research is supported by facilities in the national Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS); the centre for Multidisciplinary, Multiscale, Microtomographic Volume Imaging; the Auditory Implant Service; the Hearing and Balance Centre; the bioengineering laboratory, the nanometrology laboratory and large supercomputing facilities.

Undergraduate programmes:

Postgraduate Taught:

Postgraduate Research:

Short courses:

Biomedical Applications of Signal Processing
Demystifying Biomedical Signals

This introductory level course to Biomedical Signal Processing is designed for professionals in health care or the biomedical sciences, who may have little background in signal processing, mathematics or computing. We expect delegates with a wide range of professional experience, including clinical scientists, clinicians, technologists, audiologists, therapists, surgeons, nurses, physiologists, psychologists, ergonomists, researchers, technicians, trainees and students.

The courses will provide you with a sound understanding of methods, and practical experience in using signal processing for monitoring, diagnosis and prognosis, for clinical practice and biomedical research.

Aims

To familiarize you with the basic principles of biomedical signal acquisition
To provide a working knowledge of some of the signal processing and analysis techniques commonly used on biomedical data, and enable informed discussion and critical evaluation of methods and results;
To provide hands-on experience of the application of signal processing techniques to a range of biomedical and clinical problems, using the Matlab environment

Outcomes

On completion of the course, you should be able to

understand the origins of some of the commonly used biomedical signals, and sources of noise and distortion
specify and understand the procedures for digital signal acquisition
understand some commonly used signal analysis procedures, select appropriate approaches for a range of tasks, and interpret and critically evaluate the results obtained
write simple programs in Matlab® to undertake signal processing tasks, based on programs and routines provided.
Bi-annual, day seminar on Computer Simulations in Bioengineering at IMechE

Collaboration with cardiovascular device companies and cardiologists.
Collaboration with Moor Instruments in microvascular imaging and sensing tissue health
Surgical orthopaedic devices (DePuy Orthopaedics, Warsaw, USA)
Scientific visualisation (Visualisation Sciences Group, Bordeaux, France)

The Auditory Implant Service is based at the University — Testing hearing at the AIS

We have facilities for

advanced paediatric and adult hearing and balance assessment
bioengineering (including cell culture, tissue characterisation, microscopy and fabrication of lab-on-chip devices)
multiscale x-ray computed tomography (CT) at muVIS
high performance computing clusters (including Iridis)
surface engineering and tribology (nCATS and access to NPL facilities at Teddington)