Engineering and Medicine Joining Forces to Improve the Quality of Life

Collaborations between engineers, physicians, dentists and biological scientists have long served to enhance health care and extend longevity. Magnetic resonance imaging for diagnostics, the use of lasers in surgery, replacement hip implants and mechanical heart valves can all trace their beginnings to the kinds of professional liaisons that decades ago created the first x-ray machines, prosthetic devices and dental equipment.

Today, as technological advances and modern medicine become inextricably linked, the field of biomedical engineering has emerged as a distinct discipline, with research and development of innovative concepts and their applications evolving at an astounding pace. Helping to fill the rapidly expanding need for engineers with specialized training in this field is UCLA's Biomedical Engineering Interdepartmental Program which was officially approved by the University in January, 1998.

"We are fully committed to providing the comprehensive education and research experience necessary in this important field," says A.R. Frank Wazzan, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Working in partnership with our colleagues and with the burgeoning biomedical engineering industry, we want to play a significant part in helping to shape the technological future of medicine."

Chaired by John D. Mackenzie and under the guidance of a campus-wide faculty advisory committee, the Biomedical Engineering Program leads to an M.S. and a Ph.D. Students may choose from seven areas of emphasis including Biomedical Signal and Image Processing, Biomedical Instrumentation, Biomechanics, Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Biocybernetics, NeuroEngineering, and Bioacoustics, Speech and Hearing.

Students may even elect to participate in the UCLA NeuroEngineering Training Program recently funded by a $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant to the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the UCLA Brain Research Institute (BRI). Under the co-direction of BRI Director Allan Tobin and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Jack Judy, this program will be conducted within the Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering Program and the Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program for Neuroscience.

Students in the Biomedical Engineering Program also have the opportunity to take part in interdisciplinary research programs supported by UCLA, government and industry. More than 25 faculty members of the School of Engineering and an equal number of their colleagues campus-wide are currently conducting research on an extensive range of subjects.

One of the major research areas in the school is Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), which involves the design and applications of ultra-small devices. Recognizing the potential for MEMS in medicine, Engineering Professors Chih-Ming Ho and C.J. Kim, both from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, along with Judy from the Electrical Engineering Department have been actively collaborating with medical school Professors J. deKernion of Urology and M. Bergsneider of Neurosurgery to exploit the use of new MEMS devices for surgery and sensing.

In the field of medical diagnostics, Professor Bruce Dunn of the Materials Science and Engineering Department has succeeded in encapsulating chameleon-like enzymes in "smart glass," ideal for creating smaller and more accurate biosensors. The enzymes change color when they come into contact with particular substances, their color intensifying as greater quantities of the materials are detected. A single tiny dot of smart glass at the end of an optical fiber is all that is needed to serve as a real-time sensor with such practical applications as monitoring blood chemistry during surgery.

Advances in the way diagnostic digital images are stored may be close at hand due to the efforts of Associate Professor John Villasenor of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Storing such images as x-rays and MRIs is now an extremely data-intensive operation, with a single x-ray requiring many megabytes of space. Villasenor is developing compression algorithms to create a new generation of compression techniques to enable more efficient storage. This will also increase the speed of transfer of digital images.

Physicians will be able to use their computers to make well-informed treatment decisions with the help of a sophisticated new database being developed by a research team led by Professors Wesley Chu and Alfonso Cardenas of the Department of Computer Science and Assistant Professor Ricky Taira of the Department of Radiological Sciences. While doctors at major hospitals and university medical centers such as UCLA may take for granted easy access to archives of diagnostic images such as x-rays and consultation with a large network of peers, physicians in smaller hospitals often do not enjoy resources of this scope. Using the Knowledge-Based Multimedia Medical Distributed Database System, physicians everywhere can quickly access an encyclopedic network of case histories similar to those of their patients, including x-rays and MRIs, information on successful treatments and side effects, voice or video annotation from physicians and in-depth analysis.

Brain surgeons may benefit from research being conducted under the direction of Computer Science Professor Walter J. Karplus. He and a team of UCLA researchers have developed a computer simulation system that provides accurate images of blood flow and turbulence inside aneurysms, weak spots in arteries which can make them bulge and rupture, causing a stroke. UCLA doctors have developed an endovascular technique for repairing brain aneurysms in which a coil of soft platinum wire is inserted via a catheter into the bubble-like protrusion at the weak spot of the artery. Once in place, a small electrical current is applied to the platinum wire filament to detach it from the catherter, which is then removed. Blood clots form around the filament, stabilizing the aneurysm.

The technique is promising but has its risks. Performing the procedure in the wake of a pulsating, turbulent flow of blood, surgeons risk rupturing the thin artery wall, which could cause instant death. With Karplus's computer simulation system, physicians don virtual reality goggles and use a wand and data glove to "fly around" inside an artery prior to the procedure, increasing the likelihood that surgery is successful.

Professor Vijay Gupta of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is working to develop more durable artificial hip joints. A relatively common procedure, hip replacement removes weak or damaged joints and replaces them with a steel shank and a ball joint made of plastics, metal and composites. To ensure that the surfaces of joint components turn smoothly and withstand the continual friction of movement, they are coated with a thin layer of an extremely tough plastic, metal or composite material. It is critical that this layer bonds strongly with its host material in order to endure the weight and torsion during use.

Gupta tests joint bonding materials using his laser spallation method, in which he blasts them with a laser beam. The burst of instant heat sends a shock wave through the bonded materials, pulling them apart. Gupta's ultimate objective is to develop tougher bonding materials, reducing the need for additional surgery to replace artificial joints that don't withstand longterm use.

UCLA researchers are also striving for a better understanding of how human hearing works, with the aim of applying these concepts to everything from hearing aids to voice-activated devices. Professor Kung Yao of the Department of Electrical Engineering is working to develop hearing aid microphone arrays that significantly improve upon conventional single-microphone systems. Yao's arrays promise to significantly enhance the effective signal-to-noise ratio of the speaker relative to other sounds, increasing speech intelligibility.

In separate research, Associate Professor Abeer Alwan, also of the Department of Electrical Engineering, is seeking to improve hearing aids by studying how humans perceive and process speech, selectively canceling out background noise in order to comprehend spoken language.

Alwan is also using magnetic resonance imaging to study tongue dynamics and three-dimensional vocal tract geometry to develop speech production models that more accurately reflect the acoustics, articulatory dynamics and cognition of both normal and disordered human speech. Alwan's research may improve current computerized voice recognition systems, opening the way for hands-off (verbal) computing and voice-controlled devices such as manufacturing robots, household appliances and automobiles.

A better understanding of brain development in fetuses and cognitive behavior in adults may be possible as a result of research by Joseph DiStefano, III, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and director of the Biocybernetics Laboratory. In a research breakthrough, DiStefano's laboratory recently determined the quantity of self-regulating thyroid hormone produced in the brain cells of mammals. Such a specific measurement had never before been successfully made.

Under the leadership of Professor Harold Monbouquette of the Chemical Engineering Department, who chairs the field of Biochemical Engineering, researchers are collaborating on biosensors, biocatalysis, DNA microarray technology, control of aerobic and anaerobic gene regulation in bacteria and investigating redox enzymes from microorganisms that thrive in temperatures above the boiling point of water. Collaborators include Engineering Professors Michael Deem, James Liao, Joseph DiStefano, III (also professor of Medicine), along with Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Professors C. Fred Fox, Robert Gunsalus and Imke Schroeder.

The new Biomedical Engineering Program offered its first class in September, 1998 with some 15 students. There are more than 75 new applicants for the coming academic year. "The present success of the academic and research programs in biomedical engineering has been the result of the wonderful collaboration between our faculty and those of the Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and the College of Letters and Science," says Associate Dean Mackenzie.