Biomedical engineering course at the City University of Hong Kong

The Biomedical Engineering elective course is first to offer to the students of Computer Engineering, Electronic Engineering and Information Technology programmes in the academic year of 1998-99. 44 students have chosen this course. 38 students score grade C or above, 4 of them score grade A. The course aims to introduce the solving and understanding of the problems in biology and medicine using principles and methods drawn from engineering and technology. Emphasis is placed in the teaching of bioinstrumentation and medical imaging. Topics include biosignal sensors, origin of biopotentials, ECG and its analysis, principles of CT and MR, image analysis and segmentation, three-dimensional reconstruction, etc. The syllabus is covered in 28 hours lectures and 14 tutorials. There is no laboratory session given to the students. Instead, a demonstration of a medical imaging package is given to stimulate their interest. Also, a site visit is arranged to raise their awareness of the biomedical engineering activity in Hong Kong. Students are assessed in their coursework and examination. The coursework, which counts 30% in the total mark, consists of 3 assignments and a formal test. One assignment is a programming exercise. Each student is required to write a program to display an MIT-BIH ECG data file, then add a particular type of artificial noise to the ECG wave, and finally carry out QRS complex detection using two algorithms. Each student is assessed in the accuracy of the program, goodness of user interface, quality of documentation, and performance in answering questions.