Biomedical Engineering - Diagnostics and Clinical Correlations

On the basis of selected, clinically relevant, pathological health conditions those technologies from in vitro diagnostics will be discussed in detail that contribute to the identification of diseases and guide therapeutic decisions. Thus, engineering aspects such as hardware design and processing of results and data will be treated on a background of the respective clinical settings and requirements. Typical limitations and problems of diagnostics will be discussed.

Upon successful completion of this module students are able to
• interpret differentiated pathological health conditions and their impact on the parameters and data to be measured and analysed,
• analyse and classify the construction principles of vitro diagnostic methods and devices
• structure the typical development processes of in vitro diagnostics,
• analyse the strenghts, but also typical limitations and problems of in vitro diagnostics in given case studies

Basic knowledge of biology and biochemistry;
Attendance of introductory lectures about Biomedical Engineering (e.g. Biomedical Engineering – Grundlagen der Zellbiologie; Biomedical Engineering – Organisation der Zelle)

The module is composed of a lecture (2 SWS) and an exercise (2 SWS).
The contents of the lecture will be communicated by talks. In the exercise students are encouraged to a self-reliant examination of scientific literature and to an immersion into selected topics of the field. The appropriate teaching format is individual and group work, case studies and presentation.

Power Point Präsentationen, Tafelarbeit, Videos

The following reading material is recommended:
Understanding Pathophysiology. S.E. Huether, K.L. McCance. Elsevier, 2016
Further reading material will be provided by moodle in advance.

In a written 90 min exam the students prove by solving tasks and answering questions, that they are able to correctly interpret the relationship between differentiated pathological health conditions and diagnostic parameters and data and to structure and analyse the construction principles and development processes of diagnostic analytics. In the exam no auxiliary means are allowed.
In the exercise the students prove their ability to analyse and discuss the scope, limitations and problems of diagnostic methods with reon the basis of selected case studies. The grading will be based on a presentation to such a case study or published work examined in homework.
The final grading is composed of the following elements:
80% written exam / 20% presentation