414 Biomedical engineering and artificial intelligence – a technical perspective

Abstract

This chapter tries to set the stage for this book by providing a general introduction to the field of Biomedical Engineering (BME, see Section 4.2.1) and the data which is used and generated in this field (Section 4.2.2).We will highlight the specific challenges, such as lack of accessibility, availability, and high heterogeneity of data, which need to be considered when planning the use of artificial intelligence (AI) methods.We also introduce some key concepts and taxonomies of AI (Section 4.2.3) to provide the reader with a solid foundation for this book.In section 4.3, we outline some existing and potential benefits of AI for BME.The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential challenges and ethical concerns (Section 4.4). Definitions Biomedical engineeringDue to its high degree of interdisciplinarity and rapid development, it is not trivial to find a short but complete definition of BME.In principle, concepts from the field of engineering are applied to solve problems in the fields of medicine and biology; therefore, biomedical engineers are involved in all steps of developing health technology.The beginning of the 20th century marks the beginning of the field: In the year 1895 Willem Einthoven, a Dutch physician, invented the electrocardiography (ECG) device, while at the same time Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen discovered X-rays.Both received a Nobel Prize for their discoveries, Einthoven in Physiology in 1924, and Rntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.Therefore, both contributed significantly to the fields of physiological signal monitoring and medical imaging, which are applied nowadays in hospitals all over the world and enable physicians to gain insight into patient health.Around the same time other important inventions were made, e.g. in 1886, the Austrian Maximilan Nitze together with his colleague Joseph Leitner built the first working endoscope for visual inspection of the bladder and Scipione Riva-Rocci developed the mercury-based blood pressure cuff in 1896.Besides physiological signal acquisition and biomedical imaging, many other research branches have been developed, which were realized by biomedical engineers.Examples include medical and healthcare robotics [1,2] for various use cases,

Ähnliche Arbeiten