The objective of this subject is to teach the design of contemporary information systems for biological and medical data. These data are growing at a prodigious rate, and new information systems are required. This subject will cover examples from biology and medicine to illustrate complete life cycle information systems, beginning with data acquisition, following to data storage and finally to retrieval and analysis. Design of appropriate databases, client-server strategies, data interchange protocols, and computational modeling architectures will be covered. Students are expected to have some familiarity with scientific application software and a basic understanding of at least one contemporary programming language (C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python, etc.). A major term project is required of all students. Reading is assigned from the contemporary literature, and there is occasional homework.

" This course teaches the design of contemporary information systems for biological and medical data. Examples are chosen from biology and medicine to illustrate complete life cycle information systems, beginning with data acquisition, following to data storage and finally to retrieval and analysis. Design of appropriate databases, client-server strategies, data interchange protocols, and computational modeling architectures. Students are expected to have some familiarity with scientific application software and a basic understanding of at least one contemporary programming language (e.g. C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python). A major term project is required of all students. This subject is open to motivated seniors having a strong interest in biomedical engineering and information system design with the ability to carry out a significant independent project. This course was offered as part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) program as course number SMA 5304."

The objective of this subject is to teach the design of contemporary information systems for biological and medical data. These data are growing at a prodigious rate, and new information systems are required. This subject will cover examples from biology and medicine to illustrate complete life cycle information systems, beginning with data acquisition, following to data storage and finally to retrieval and analysis. Design of appropriate databases, client-server strategies, data interchange protocols, and computational modeling architectures will be covered. Students are expected to have some familiarity with scientific application software and a basic understanding of at least one contemporary programming language (C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python, etc.). A major term project is required of all students. Reading is assigned from the contemporary literature, and there is occasional homework.

This course presents the fundamentals of digital signal processing with particular emphasis on problems in biomedical research and clinical medicine. It covers principles and algorithms for processing both deterministic and random signals. Topics include data acquisition, imaging, filtering, coding, feature extraction, and modeling. The focus of the course is a series of labs that provide practical experience in processing physiological data, with examples from cardiology, speech processing, and medical imaging. The labs are done on the MIT Server in MATLAB® during weekly lab sessions that take place in an electronic classroom. Lectures cover signal processing topics relevant to the lab exercises, as well as background on the biological signals processed in the labs.

This course will cover the basic concepts of clinical psychology -- the study of diagnosing, treating, and understanding abnormal and maladaptive behaviors. Much of the information in this course is based on the Diagnostic Statistical Manual IV-TR (DSM), which is the industry standard for both clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. Few issues in the field have hard-and-fast answers. As such, rather than providing you with step-by-step directions, this course has been designed to assist you in making educated decisions when diagnosing and treating a mental disease. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Describe the historical context of the emergence of clinical psychology; Demonstrate an awareness of the differences between mental health professionals in the broad field of clinical psychology; Identify the subspecialty areas within clinical psychology (i.e., community psychology, health psychology, and neuropsychology); Define the main tasks of the clinical psychologist and explain how the contributions of this subspecialty fit into or relate to the broader field of psychology; Define the criteria for what is considered 'abnormal' versus 'normal' and explain how these definitions fit into the notion that psychopathology exists on a continuum; Compare/contrast the different types of psychotherapy treatments; Discuss the ethical considerations related to the practice of psychotherapy; List the main diagnostic features of a variety of mental disorders (i.e., mood disorders, schizophrenia, etc.); Identify the potential factors that may contribute to the instigation and persistence of mental illness for individuals across the lifespan (i.e., children, adults, and older adults). (Psychology 205)

The purpose of this project is to develop a method for monitoring, evaluating the status of a tumor undergoing radiation treatment and transmit the radiation dose received by the tumor in real-time to an external data acquisition unit and evaluate the treatment strategy. The target system to be designed would consist of a miniature wireless sensor module which would be implanted in the region of interest and this unit transmits the data to an external receiver wirelessly.

The Modern fabrication process allows us to fabricate CMOS circuits in nanometer range which is highly desirable when used in radiation sensing scheme where size is the main constraint. The heart of the sensing system is a MOS transistor device. The electrical properties of the MOS device (drain to source resistance, threshold voltage) change when exposed to gamma radiation. The objective of this project is to evaluate the MOS transistor parameters change with radiation dose, study the effects with varying transistor widths, lengths and propose the ideal characteristics of the CMOS device. The scheme of the radiation measurement is presented. Some of the questions that will be addressed in this report are – The effect of radiation on channel resistance during and after radiation, temperature dependency of the radiation effects. The complete characterization of the sensor is performed and the results are produced and cross checked with device physics. The characterized CMOS transistor is exposed to radiation and the radiation dosage received by the transistor is sent to a RFID receiver using radio frequency communication. The signal at the RFID receiver is filtered and the actual radiation dosage was determined from the filtered output’s duty cycle. A novel approach is used in determining the radiation measurement in this study.

The purpose of this project is to develop a method for monitoring, evaluating the status of a tumor undergoing radiation treatment and transmit the radiation dose received by the tumor in real-time to an external data acquisition unit and evaluate the treatment strategy. The target system to be designed would consist of a miniature wireless sensor module which would be implanted in the region of interest and this unit transmits the data to an external receiver wirelessly.

The Modern fabrication process allows us to fabricate CMOS circuits in nanometer range which is highly desirable when used in radiation sensing scheme where size is the main constraint. The heart of the sensing system is a MOS transistor device. The electrical properties of the MOS device (drain to source resistance, threshold voltage) change when exposed to gamma radiation. The objective of this project is to evaluate the MOS transistor parameters change with radiation dose, study the effects with varying transistor widths, lengths and propose the ideal characteristics of the CMOS device. The scheme of the radiation measurement is presented. Some of the questions that will be addressed in this report are – The effect of radiation on channel resistance during and after radiation, temperature dependency of the radiation effects. The complete characterization of the sensor is performed and the results are produced and cross checked with device physics. The characterized CMOS transistor is exposed to radiation and the radiation dosage received by the transistor is sent to a RFID receiver using radio frequency communication. The signal at the RFID receiver is filtered and the actual radiation dosage was determined from the filtered output’s duty cycle. A novel approach is used in determining the radiation measurement in this study.

Radiation therapy involves treating cancer cells with beams of high-energy particles, such as gamma rays or X-rays. Radiation therapy affects cancer cells by destroying the DNA of the cells. The direct damage is caused by a photon, electron, proton, neutron, or ion beam and the indirect damage is caused by ionizing the atoms which make up the DNA chain. The indirect ionization occurs as a result of the ionization of water, forming free radicals (hydroxyl radicals), which in turn damage the DNA. In most cases the radiation effect is due to free radicals. This is because cells have mechanisms for repairing DNA damage. Since cancer cells cannot be differentiated like stem cell-like, they reproduce rapidly, and have a reduced ability to repair sub-lethal damage when compared to healthy cells. Both healthy and cancerous cells are damaged by radiation; the goal of treatment is to affect as few normal cells as possible. The radiation on healthy cells can be severe, to epithelial surfaces (skin, oral, pharyngeal and bowel mucosa, urothelium), swelling edema or Oedema). In order to reduce the effect of radiation on healthy cells, some of the advanced radiation therapy techniques are designed like Intensity modulated radiation therapy1 (IMRT), 3-D conformal radiation therapy.

Currently, the radiation received by the tissue is based on initial 3-D view of the tumor. This method doesn’t consider the effect of changing tumor size after it has received the radiation due to which the radiation target might have changed. Even with such high sophistication in dose delivery, when the patient moves during receiving the dose the dose is delivered to the healthy tissue. The need for real-time dose monitoring is clearly understood by this problem statement. The Thermo-luminescent dosimeters (TLD’s) have been used to measure the radiation received but the main problem of using them is they give a measure of total radiation received by the subject for the duration of the treatment, real-time monitoring is not possible. If a miniature wireless radiation sensing device capable of measuring the radiation received is placed at the area of interest. The position and radiation measurements can be conducted from an external source in real time and thus we can device strategies for radiation therapy to optimize the process.

The wireless detector should be extremely small, capable to transmitting data, linear radiation response characteristics, independent of beam direction [5].This module will be placed internally at the tumor. The potential candidates for the radiation measurement are obtained by filtering them on the basis of device materials, doping levels, working voltages and currents. The main feature to look for in this device is a high sensitivity to radiation. Different materials like silicon, GaAs, are considered. The test protocols and testing environment were designed to minimize the variations of the device characteristics to temperature, humidity etc. The CMOS device characterization was conducted statistically. The ideal CMOS device properties were discerned. An appropriate circuitry has been used to convert the change in the device parameters which is a measure of the radiation level to digital form.

These digital signals were sent wirelessly through a serial RFID communication channel. The system includes a remote receiver in wireless communication and is configured to receive the transmitted sensor data. The receiver is positioned external to the subject. The system should accommodate a data processor which is configured to receive the transmitted data, data correction when environmental effects in subject are changing [8].

Introduces the basic methods for infectious disease epidemiology and case studies of important disease syndromes and entities. Methods include definitions and nomenclature, outbreak investigations, disease surveillance, case-control studies, cohort studies, laboratory diagnosis, molecular epidemiology, dynamics of transmission, and assessment of vaccine field effectiveness. Case-studies focus on acute respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, hepatitis, HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, malaria, and other vector-borne diseases.

Lectures by current practitioners of cancer prevention control in clinical oncology cover the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention/screening measures used for cancers such as lung, breast, prostate, colon/rectal, etc.

A study in the art and science of medical diagnosis.

X-rays, CT scans and MRI scans are all medical imaging techniques of great practical importance that have been encountered by a great many people in their medical histories. This unit illustrates how these techniques work – and their limitations and advantages.

Hallmarks of cancer, causes and preventions, diagnoses and treatment are explained.

This challenge will deal with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of a common cow ailment, mastitis.

Introduces representations, techniques, and architectures used to build applied systems and to account for intelligence from a computational point of view. Applications of rule chaining, heuristic search, constraint propagation, constrained search, inheritance, and other problem-solving paradigms. Applications of identification trees, neural nets, genetic algorithms, and other learning paradigms. Speculations on the contributions of human vision and language systems to human intelligence.

Neural structures and mechanisms mediating the detection, localization, and recognition of sounds. Discussion of how acoustic signals are coded by auditory neurons, the impact of these codes on behavorial performance, and the circuitry and cellular mechanisms underlying signal transformations. Topics include temporal coding, neural maps and feature detectors, learning and plasticity, and feedback control. General principles are conveyed by theme discussions of auditory masking, sound localization, musical pitch, speech coding, and cochlear implants, and auditory scene analysis.

This video segment from NOVA: "18 Ways to Make a Baby" describes a technique used to determine the health of a developing embryo.