Biomedical engineering is a very broad and interdisciplinary field. It is virtually impossible to do justice to this breadth in one introductory course. We attempt, however, to give a broad overview that covers some key topics of general interest and illustrate some of the current active areas of research that are being pursued by the biomedical engineering faculty at Tufts.

While being general, the course will be quantitative and try to convey the necessity of mathematical, physical, computational and engineering concepts that are necessary to address the wide array of biomedical problems. Since the course is offered across the colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts, the quantitative skills required will be basic (for the joy of some and the disappointment of others).

Syllabus of course and lecture listing

Lecture 1 - Course introduction and overview

Lecture 2 - The human body - a BME perspective

Lecture 3 - Modeling the human body – mechanical aspects

Lecture 4 - Modeling the human body – electrical aspects

Lecture 5 - Global modeling

Lecture 6 - Biosensors

Lecture 7 - Human ear- mechanical models of the cochlea

Lecture 8 - Optical Imaging

Lecture 9 - The Eye: physiological  and clinical aspects 

Lecture 10 - Introduction to lasers, fiber optics and optical instruments

Lecture 11 - Introduction to lasers, fiber optics and optical instruments

Lecture 12 - Biomedical imaging – microscopy (Georgakoudi)

Lecture 13 - Biomedical imaging – microscopy 

Lecture 14,15 - Engineering at the cellular level. - Tissue Engineering  (Kaplan)

Lecture 16 - Biostatistics

Lecture 17 - Biostatistics

Lecture 18 - Other medical imaging techniques – X-ray, MRI,… (Fantini)

Lecture 19 - Engineering at the subcellular level - Nanomedicine

Lecture 20 - Optical tweezers (Cronin-Golomb)

Additional materials - mechanical systems - the retina book - stat tables