Page 10 - Computational Modeling in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics

Preface

This book is about physical, mathematical, and numerical modeling in engineering
problems of biomedical investigation, procedures, and therapies. The elect viewpoint
is the continuous media, subject to processes and interactions that happen contigu-
ously, in space, and continuously, in time. The emphasis is set on the quantitative
representation of the underlying phenomenological couplings (electrical, mechanical,
hemodynamic, and thermal), unifying vehicle being the thermodynamic analysis, and
the principle of the constructal organization and evolution of animated and inanimate
systems—structuring, morphology, and evolution. The accent is set on the physical
understanding and on the liberty to choose between approximate and exact calcula-
tions—from scale analysis, as a preliminary step that produces bird’s eye view estima-
tions, to numerical methods that provide accuracy to the predicted results.

Computational modeling for biomedical engineering
Biomedical engineering (used here), medical bioengineering, engineering in medicine
and biology, or else are mere as many names for a reach and complex field of research
and development that belongs in the same time to biology, medicine, medical physics,
and engineering of various orientations, given by its pioneers in the field first, the his-
torical stage and the participating disciplines from which they came. Regardless of the
name given, however, the “engineering” part leads us to think about its significance:
creation, engineering, practical realization, under the sign of the rigor of the measure,
and space-time dimensional predetermination of the object, the produced system.
Measurement and sizing are based on and develop quantitative cause effect rela-
tionships that give confidence in the feasibility, realism, and robustness (object and sys-
tem) of the engineering creation. And quantitative relations are, in fact, mathematical
formulations. The computational methods—theories, algorithms, software, and hard-
ware systems, for short numerical modeling—which are developed and used for the
analysis and solution of the mathematical representations of biomedical systems and in
the design of devices, have reached the level of development at which physi-
cal mathematical numerical modeling becomes a tool and a way of thinking com-
mon to engineering, biology, and medicine. Numerical modeling thus becomes a
powerful and valuable means in understanding and predicting medical applications—
underlying physical phenomena, procedures, therapies, and scanning technologies.

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