Today, electrical engineering is converging with various fields beyond just power and circuits, and biomedical engineering (BME), which is converging with bio, is gaining attention. BME is becoming a core discipline that drives innovation in medical technology, and many advances are expected in the future.
Today, we are living in an era of rapid technological change. There are many fields of technology, but especially in the fields of electronics, communications, and computers, the rate of change is fast and extensive. For example, even if you buy a new cell phone, a better one will be released just a few months later. In the case of TVs, we’ve seen digital TVs, HDTVs, 3D TVs, and now smart TVs. These various electronics, communication, and computer-related technologies fall under the umbrella of electrical engineering.
However, electrical engineering is not just about electricity. In addition to electrical circuits and power, electrical engineering covers a wide range of other fields, such as displays, programming, signal processing, communications, and systems. These are all areas that have been studied in electrical engineering for a long time. Today, however, new areas of research are emerging in electrical engineering due to the increasing convergence of disciplines. One of them is Biomedical Engineering (BME), a field that many electrical engineering researchers are beginning to take an interest in.
As the name implies, BME is a technology that is fused with biology and is applied to the medical field, especially for humans. The 21st century has been dubbed the bio-age, which means that research related to life is being actively conducted, and the ultimate goal of such research is to find something beneficial for humans. In this regard, BME, which is directly related to the human healthcare field, is a field with a bright future and many advancements are expected. For this reason, BME is growing rapidly in industry and is becoming an increasingly important part of electrical engineering. The importance of BME cannot be overemphasized, so in this article, we will explain the growing importance of BME. In particular, since BME covers a wide range of topics, we will illustrate it with some representative studies and examples of its use.
First, one of the main parts of BME is stimulation and recording. Many organisms, including humans, are made up of many cells, which do not act in isolation, but rather communicate with each other and metabolize. In this process, ions move in and out of the cells, creating potential differences that transmit signals. Recording and stimulation are techniques that utilize this potential difference. Literally, recording is a way to record the difference in potential between the inside and outside of a cell to determine how and with which cells cells are communicating. Conversely, stimulation is the application of electrical impulses to specific cells to activate inactive cells or to stop cells that are doing unnecessary work. An example of how this technique is used in practice is in patients with vision loss, where recording is utilized to determine which of the different stages of the cell’s response to light stimulation is causing the problem. In the case of stimulation, it is used in a method called Deep Brain Stimulation to stimulate parts of the brain of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
Second, there are bio sensors. Bio sensor literally means a sensor that detects biological signals or stimuli, and it can be divided into electrical sensor, chemical sensor, and optical sensor according to the detection method. When it comes to electrical engineering, electrical sensors are important, and ECG sensors are the most commonly used. ECG is short for electrocardiography, which is the detection of biopotentials generated by the heart. The heart is constantly pumping blood throughout the body and taking back blood containing waste products, and it is the job of an ECG sensor to detect the electrical signals that occur during this process. When the heart is beating normally, the ECG should look a certain way, but when abnormal behavior occurs, the ECG graph looks different. This is very useful for understanding the heart’s vital functions, and the ECG is the periodic graph that appears on the monitor next to the patient in the hospital.
Other areas covered by BME include bio materials research to better characterize materials used in various medical devices. In addition, medical imaging, which uses the movement of electrons and the resulting electromagnetic field to make it easier to see the condition of a person with a disease at a glance, is another area of research. Tissue engineering, the creation of artificial organs, is also a branch of BME.
BME is a young field that has only just begun to be studied in earnest, but it is gaining traction around the world because humans have long sought to live longer and healthier lives. It’s even predicted to be a multi-trillion dollar market in the future. Many advances have already been made, especially in the areas of bionic hearing and bionic vision. BME technologies are helping people with hearing and vision loss, and the pace of technological advancement is so fast that progress is being made every day.
With more research and investment, BME could revolutionize the current medical field. This will bring us one step closer to the healthy lives we dream of.
