Originally Published MDT May/June 2009
THE INTERVIEW
MDT’s Five-Minute Interview
Medical Device Technology’s (MDT) series of interviews offers personal perspectives on the diverse and dynamic medical device technology industry. Here, we talk to Dr Bin He.
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Dr Bin He |
Q. If I wasn’t talking to you right now, what would you be doing?
A. I would be discussing research with my graduate students or fellows, communicating with my IEEE colleagues on Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) activities or meeting with industrial colleagues. For example, I visited Medtronic Inc. today for a presentation on neural sensing and imaging where we discussed possible future neural devices. This seminar is also cosponsored by the Twin Cities Chapter of EMBS, which has many members from industry. In fact, of more than 8000 EMBS members, close to half
are from industry.
are from industry.
Q. How did you get into the medical device industry?
A. I started biomedical engineering research when I was a graduate student. I was excited by the progress of the field and the promise that applying engineering to biomedical and health care problems may change our society.
Q. What is the best thing about your work?
A. The best thing is the freedom to pursue research, which I like, and the opportunity to do multiple things such as research, teaching and mentoring as well as public service. The most exciting research I have done is to develop high resolution functional neuroimaging technology enabling imaging dynamic brain activity and connectivity. For example, currently surgical planning in epilepsy frequently requires invasive intracranial recordings, which are expensive and risky. My work is related to developing a noninvasive functional neuroimaging technology, which is aimed at localising seizure sources from scalp electroencephalogram measurements with the aid of structure magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We are in the middle of developing this technology onto a potential clinical device and are collaborating with the Mayo Clinic on the clinical evaluation.
Q. What do you think is the most important medical device invention ever?
A. I think the invention of MRI has had a significant impact on science and medicine. The MRI device not only provides high resolution information on the structure and anatomy of the brain and other organs, it also provides rich information about the functions of the body.
Q. What should people give attention to?
A. When working on medical device research, it is important to realise the clinical needs in order to have your technology better adopted. In other words, work on something that is driven by needs from the real world, not driven by the beauty of the technique itself.
Q. What is the most exciting development on the horizon?
A. An extremely exciting development is the approach of integrating information from multimodal measurements (such as EEG/MEG with functional MRI), which promises to provide high resolution spatio–temporal brain imaging. Although this development is still currently in the research laboratory, rapid movement may eventually lead to practice in the clinical setting where every MRI scanner would be equipped with an EEG device. There are two technical challenges: one is to develop a novel multimodal integration technology and this is currently being pursued by scientists in research laboratories; another is to develop a MR-compatible device that will allow recording electroencephalograms within a MRI scanner. Although there are currently few systems on the market, novel devices would find market appreciation in this exciting field in the near future.
Q. What do you want from your suppliers?
A. As a scientist, I hope long term funding is enhanced so that less time is spent on writing grant applications; instead it could be used for making explorations. It is also important for the sake of our next generation that outstanding young people are not discouraged from pursuing research careers.
Bin He, PhD, FIEEE, FAIMBE, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Neuroscience, Director, Center for Neuroengineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, USA, www.umn.edu President 2009–2010, IEEE EMBS.
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