Your Biomedical Challenge: Painlessly Detecting Disease
Learn the potentials of ultrasound.Copyright 2006 Drickey, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlokaPhoto2006a.jpg
Students are introduced to the unit challenge: To develop a painless means of identifying cancerous tumors. Solving the challenge depends on an understanding of the properties of stress and strain. After learning the challenge question, students generate ideas and consider the knowledge required to solve the challenge. Then they read an expert's opinion on ultrasound imaging and the potentials for detecting cancerous tumors. This interview helps to direct student research and learning towards finding a solution.
Through years of developing medical imaging, engineers and scientists have gained the ability to control and manipulate potentially lethal radiation in order to produce meaningful, lifesaving images. As students are presented with the challenge of designing a means of painlessly detecting breast cancer, they consider the potential hazards of the imaging techniques. In light of this consideration, students must think not just as biomedical engineers, but even further, like safety engineers as well. In the post lesson assessment questions 2-6, students consider the potential advantages and hazards of ultrasound imaging as suggested in the expert interview.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain the challenge problem.
- List information that might be needed to answer the problem.
- Group together similar areas of knowledge needed to address the challenge.