Medical imaging education in biomedical engineering curriculum: Courseware development and application through a hybrid teaching model / تعليم التصوير الطبي في مناهج الهندسة الطبية الحيوية: تطوير البرامج التعليمية وتطبيقها من خلال نموذج تعليمي مختلط

Medical imaging education in biomedical engineering curriculum: Courseware development and application through a hybrid teaching model

Abstract— Medical Imaging is a key training component in Biomedical Engineering programs.

Medical imaging education is interdisciplinary training, involving physics, mathematics, chemistry, electrical engineering, computer engineering, and applications in biology and medicine.

Seeking an efficient teaching method for instructors and an effective learning environment for students has long been a goal for medical imaging education.

By the support of NSF grants, we developed the medical imaging teaching software (MITS) and associated dynamic assessment tracking system (DATS).

The MITS/DATS system has been applied to junior and senior medical imaging classes through a hybrid teaching model.

The results show that student’s learning gain improved, particularly in concept understanding and simulation project completion.

The results also indicate disparities in subjective perception between junior and senior classes.

Three institutions are collaborating to expand the courseware system and plan to apply it to different class settings.

Biomedical engineering (BME) education has developed as an interdisciplinary engineering training area in the last 30 years.

Based on the current ASEE College Profiles [1], BME undergraduate enrollment has become one of the most rapidly growing engineering majors (undergraduate enrollment has tripled from 1999 to 2010).

As a key component in BME, medical imaging, combining physics, mathematics, electrical and computer engineering, provides students with a broad view of an integration of different technologies applied to biology and medicine.

Recognizing the broad impact of medical imaging education on BME students, many institutions have established such a curriculum. Based on the Whitaker Foundation’s BME program database [2], there are 119 universities or colleges that have BME programs in the nation.

Through the Internet, we surveyed these 119 universities or colleges and found that 80 of them offered graduate level medical imaging courses, and 68 offered undergraduate level medical imaging courses.

We must acknowledge that the survey (in 2010) was based on the Internet available and accessible information and it may not be the most accurate or updated.