Research within the curricula of biomedical engineering degree: two study cases

• Autor(a) principal: Seabra, J.
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Sanches, J., Viola, F., Dinis, A. C., Mendanha, J., Pedro, L. M., Brogueira, P., Peña, M. T.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.25758/set.14
• topic: Engenharia biomédica; Ultrasonografia 3d; Placa de ateroma da bifurcação carotídea; Acuidade visual; Aberrações ópticas; Ensino e investigação; Biomedics; 3d ultrasound reconstruction; Plaque echo-structure at the carotique bifurcation; Visual acuity; Optical aberrations; Teaching and research

Since the 1980’s crucial advances in different basic and engineering sciences increasingly paved the way to a crossing-over between Engineering and Medicine, generating unprecedented progress in the modern domain of biomedical research. These recent developments have finally established Biomedical Engineering as an autonomous branch of Engineering. This new branch of Engineering asserts itself in a variety of problems, namely, biomedical imaging, bioinformatics, biotechnology and genetics at the cellular and molecular levels, biomechanics, biomaterials and tissue engineering, artificial organs, analysis of physiological signals and pattern recognition, and even management of health systems. With the beginning of the XXI, the important amount and quality of knowledge gathered, together with the motivation to boost even further possible technological and scientific developments, for social and economic reasons, laid the foundations for the first offers of university degrees, along with specialized post‑graduations, in Biomedical Engineering. Naturally, the courses sustaining those newly born degrees provide broad training, as a rule. Nonetheless, it is possible, even at the level of the Master's degree, defined within the current framework of the Bologna reform of high education in Europe, to give advanced training, allowing the students to participate actively in the already ongoing research of groups and institutes. In this article, we present two cases of success, which reflect the significance and role of professional research in the training of a Biomedical Engineer. These two cases are studies performed by undergraduate students during the last six months (only) of their senior year. As an outcome, these studies bought innovative possibilities of diagnostic, within two very different areas: ultrasound 3D imaging of arteries and vision acuity related to optic aberrations.