rEading up BOOKS

Bioengineerings a beginner's bibliography

Jesse l/l/. Hartley A good bioengineer must have a solid background in
engineering principles and then in biological
applications. Here are some books to get you started
ioengineering is dif-
ferent things to dif-
ferent people. To a
nurse with a broken
power cord on a
blood pressure moni-
tor, bioengineering is what gets it
fixed. To a medical researcher, bioen-
gineering is the design of instrumen-
tation to measure something. To your
grandfather with a heart pacemaker,
bioengineering is what keeps him go-
ing. Using a textbook definition,
bioengineering is the application of
physical and mathematical principles
to biological and medical problems.
That covers a lot of ground. Bioengi-
neering can be the use of metallurgy
to develop replacement hip joints, or
the use of plastics to replace blood
vessels, or the signal processing of
ultrasonic echo.
Another good way to characterize
bioengineering is to say that it is the
science of interfaces. For someone in
materials, this may mean studying the
compatibility of tissue or blood with
a plastic. For an electronics engineer,
the interface may be the transducer
that converts a physical quantity to
an electrical signal and that deter-
mines the performance of the instru-
ment being built. In many situations,
The field of bioengineering is wide open, offering the interested engineer oppor-
tunities ranging from the design of instrumentation, such as this computerized
tomography system (above), to the design of electronic limbs that replicate func-
tion (far right). Other bioengineers find their niche in research, where they use
equipment, such as this automated flow cytometer (right, top), to measure and
sort cancer cells (right, bottom).
General Electric Medical Systems Group (above)
Coulter Corporation, Epics Division (right, top)
Cancer Research Center, Columbia, Mo. (right, bottom)
38 0278-6648/1200-0038$1.00 1984 IEEE IEEE POTENTIALS DECEMBER 1984
the bioengineer becomes the inter-
face, as he or she interacts with peo-
ple in different fields. As one exam-
ple, the bioengineer can be the person
who translates the requirements of a
physician with an X-ray image into a
set of specifications for the design of
an image analysis system.
Because of this interdisciplinary
character, bioengineering, perhaps
more than any other subspecialty of
engineering, requires a generalist:
someone familiar with many differ-
ent fields of knowledge. But regard-
less of this need for generality, the
most important characteristic about a
bioengineer is that he or she be a good
engineer, that is, his or her training
must be firmly grounded first in engi-
neering principles, and second in bio-
logical applications.
What types of jobs might a bioen-
gineer hold? As you have been able to
see from the many articles presented
in this issue, the list is long and
varied. A clinical engineer in a hospi-
tal, for example, is one type of bioen-
gineer who is closest to seeing the ap-
plication of technology to the patient.
He or she is responsible for the tech-
nical management of the wide variety
of instrumentation found in the hos-
pital, from electrocardiogram moni-
tors to X-ray equipment. The clinical
engineer is also responsible for man-
aging the purchase and maintenance
of such equipment, as well as for the
training of others in the use of these
instruments.
For an electronics engineer interested
in biological or medical applications,
the field of instrumentation is wide
open [photos]. An electronics engi-
neer may become involved in the desig]
of an infinite variety of equipment
ranging from electrocardio-
graphs and blood pressure
moni t ors to ul t rasoni c
imaging equipment. On an-
other scale, the field of electronic
prosthesis has also grown as bioengi-
neers seek to use electronic systems to
imitate human movement and repli-
cate function. The development of
nuclear magnetic resonance and
X-ray tomographic imaging equip-
ment is another continuing process.
Design of this type of instrumenta-
tion requires skills in analog elec-
tronics, digital electronics, and soft-
ware engineering.
In the area of biomedical research,
engineers of all types have contrib-
uted to knowledge of the way the
human body functions. One example
is the fine work that has been done by
bioengineers in the area of cancer cell
measurements [page 20]. It is inter-
esting to note that many of the people
associated with the discovery of fun-
damental physical concepts were also
involved with medicine. Herman von
Helmholtz, for example, was first
trained as a physician and made
significant contributions to acoustics,
electrodynamics, and physiology.
Luigi Galvani was a professor of
anatomy and obstetrics in Bologna,
Italy. Jean L. M. Poiseuille, who de-
vised the fluid mechanics analog to
Ohm's law, was a physician who was
first interested in measuring blood
HARTLEY BIOENGINEERING: A BEGINNER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY
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pressure. Jacques A. D'Arsonval,
often associated with the moving cell
galvanometer, experimented with the
oxygenation of blood.
These are just a few examples of
the various aspects of bioengineering.
If you glance through some of the re-
cent issues of the IEEE Transactions
on Biomedical Engineering, you will
find many other subspecialties repre-
sented, including:
signal processing
robotics
system modeling
acoustics
computers
instrumentation
With such a wide variety of topics,
where should you as a potential bio-
engineer begin to research the field?
Certain basic courses in electrical or
electronics engineering are particular-
ly important. They include:
circuit analysis
linear systems
electronic circuits
physics
You should also consider additional
courses in the following areas for
electives or graduate work:
biology or physiology
communications theory
acoustics
control theory
computer hardware and software
Many schools have bioengineering
departments or offer courses in bio-
engineering or its subspecialties
[page 30].
In addition to formal curriculum,
you can also start to learn about bio-
engineering by learning about the
system you will be primarily working
with: the human body. A good text
on physiology will get you started.
The Textbook of Medical Physiology,
by A. C. Guyton, Saunders, 6th ed.,
1981, a text used by medical students,
is a good reference. If this book is
more detailed than what you want, a
more elementary text is the Textbook
of Physiology, by B. A. Schottelius
and D. D. Schottelius, Mosby, 18th
ed., 1978. These texts are just exam-
ples. Many other useful references
are available in a good medical libra-
ry. Look to see that the texts cover the
following major topics:
nervous system
muscle physiology
heart and circulatory system
respiratory system
digestive system
kidneys and renal physiology
These categories are broad, and you
may want to read selectively accord-
ing to your interests. The point is to
40
become familiar with the language
that is used and to begin to get a feel-
ing for the way the various systems of
the body relate to each other.
A more mathematical approach to
some of the topics mentioned is Engi-
neering Principles in Physiology,
Vols. I and II, edited by J. H. U.
Brown and D. S. Gann, Academic
Press, 1973. These two volumes are a
collection of writings by many au-
thors, each a specialist in a particular
field. The writing is less descriptive
than that in traditional physiology
texts and relies heavily on the engi-
neer's knowledge of the formalisms
of system theory. It is not as detailed
as the texts by Guyton or Schottelius
and Schottelius, but the mathemati-
cal approach is clearer than page after
page of description.
Instrumentation is a very impor-
tant topic in many areas of bioengi-
neering. Two texts that cover this sub-
ject well are Principles of Applied
Biomedical Instrumentation, 2nd
ed., by L. A. Geddes and L. E. Baker,
Wiley, 1975, and Biomedical Instru-
ments: Theory and Design, W. Wel-
kowitz and S. Deutsch, Academic
Press, 1976. As they should be, these
are books about transducers for mea-
suring biological phenomena such as
pressure, flow, electrical activity,
force dimensionin short, any phys-
ical quantity. Both books are orga-
nized by transducer type: resistive, in-
ductive, and capacitive.
The Welkowitz and Deutsch book
is broader in coverage, with sections
on analytical methods, radiographic
imaging, and telemetry. The Geddes
and Baker book is limited to a de-
tailed discussion of all types of trans-
ducers. The section on electrochem-
ical transducers and the discussion on
electrodes for recording electrocar-
diograms, electroencephalograms,
and other bioelectric events are im-
portant to engineers in a clinical
situation, such as a hospital. Geddes
and Baker also discuss many of the
classical techniques for measuring
blood flow, nervous activity, heart
activity, and eye motion. They do a
good job of giving the reader a histor-
ical perspective of instrumentation.
For the person interested in clinical
engineering, The Practice of Clinical
Engineering, edited by C. A. Caceres,
Academic Press, 1977, provides an
overview by a number of people ac-
tive in the field. Sections on the defi-
nition of clinical engineering, educa-
tion, legal issues, and management
give a good idea of what a clinical
engineer is and does. Of particular in-
terest to anyone considering biomedi-
cal engineering is the chapter "His-
torical Background of Interdiscipli-
nary Engineering
,,
by L. A. Geddes.
For information on the most cur-
rent developments in bioengineering,
a number of journals cover the field.
The IEEE Transactions on Biomedi-
cal Engineering and the magazine
Engineering in Medicine and Biology
(EMB) are published by the IEEE
Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Society. Transactions covers a wide
variety of topics with state-of-the-art
papers. EMB takes a more general in-
terest and tutorial approach.
The IEEE Transactions on Medical
Imaging is also sponsored by the
EMB Society and other IEEE socie-
ties. The Proceedings of the IEEE
publishes good review articles and
theme issues on topics of interest to
bioengineers. For example, the
March 1983 issue focused on compu-
terized tomography. Other journals
of interest include the Journal of Bio-
mechanics, the Journal of Clinical
Engineering, Biomaterials, and the
Journal of Biomedical Engineering.
About the author
Jesse W. Hartley is an investigator
and research assistant professor at
the Dalton Research Center at the
University of Missouri-Columbia.
His research interests are in cardio-
vascular physiology, ultrasonics, and
signal processing. D