Electrical and Biomedical Engineer

evra

I want to know if someone with a BSc in Electrical Engineering can work as a Biomedical Engineer? If yes, how possible? Can you give me the work outline of a Biomedical Engineer please and what particular things should an Electrical Engineer study to be able to work as a Biomedical Engineer?

Thank you in advance. Your inputs will be more than helpful!

evra

PF'ers won't you reply to this one..? desperately looking forward to seeing your inputs.

thanks

Choppy

Biomedical engineering is a fairly broad field. The BMEs that I know personally specialize in MRI, but this is by no means the extent of biomedical engineering. They got their bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and then moved into BME for graduate work.

I'm sure there are many people who work in BME who came from an electrical background. If you are going through for electrical engineering, make sure that you have a good handle on sigal processing if you're interested in medical imaging.

evra

Thank you very much..But what is the actual job of a Biomedical Engineer?

chill_factor

from what I read on wikipedia (not an expert by any means don't take my word for it) the electronics part of BME is designing, maintaining, and calibrating biomedical instruments, including medical NMR, X-ray tomography, gamma knife, laser surgery, ultrasound and various optical analytical schemes.

there's also a more "biochemistry and materials science" part of BME that's based on tissue engineering, prosthetics, drug delivery, stuff like that.

evra

An Electrical Engineer might not know what Biochemistry is about, so how can he be a Biomedical Engineer??

Choppy

Like I said it's a broad field, so there is a lot of variation between positions. The BMEs I know have become medical physicists specializing in MRI. So they work on projects like MR spectroscopy (determining the relative concentrations of various molecules within patients, experimental animals, or samples), designing pulse sequences that give different information about the objects being scanned, or generally improving the quality of the images that are produced. There is also a safety component to their position as well that involves limiting risks to patients from RF heating or to staff from working around strong magnetic fields.

But that's just one small aspect of the field. BMEs for example, could work for a commecial company that produces any number of medical devices - anything from pacemakers to artificial heart valves, to ultrasound transducers. There is obviously a lot over overlap with other fields of engineering.

You learn what you need to know. Graduate BME students may take some courses outside of tradiational engineering in order to work on their particular projects. Usually, BME projects are more about creating devices or algorithms that have particular biomedical applications. It's not necessary to know the "squishy science" side of things to the extend that MDs or biochemists might.

evra

Thank you sir..

evra

One other thing! in my country we have a very large medical research center but they have few Biomedical Engineers and there job is to fix spoil machines, spoiled centrifuges, pipettes etc.. so i was thinking maybe that the job of an electrical or mechanical engineer and not a biomedical star. any help??

evra

chill and choppy, i am waiting for your wonderful inputs again!

Choppy

I'm not sure exactly what your question is.

Remember that the term "biomedical engineer" can be applied rather liberally. In some places it may be used to refer to a biomedical technician, who is not necessarily a credentialled professional engineer.

evra

ok.. i wanted to ask if fixing spoiled machines, spoiled centrifuges, pipettes etc is also part of biomedical engineering?

evra

Choppy, i am still waiting for your reply.. can you kindly give me your email adress so that i will be contacting you directly..

regards