Technological advances in bioengineering are revolutionizing medicine, allowing scientists and engineers to peer into the very heart of the body’s cells and understand disease at the molecular level.  No other field stands to gain as much from this revolution in the 21st century, says Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D., and director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, an institute within the National Institutes of Health.

Michael Khoo, left, chairman of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, an institute within the National Institutes of Health.

Pettigrew was the featured speaker at a Viterbi School centennial lecture on March 31 entitled, “The Promise of Emerging Technologies in 21st Century Medicine.” The lecture was hosted by the Viterbi School’s Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) in honor of 100 years of engineering.

BME chairman Michael C. K. Khoo, a professor of biomedical engineering and holder of the Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair, gave a brief overview of the department, which has more than doubled in research funding in the last three to four years. He described the research interests of new and established faculty and recited some recent faculty awards before introducing Pettigrew.

“Medicine is really undergoing a change now,” Pettigrew said, “and extraordinary scientific advances will give scientists many new tools to predict and preempt disease before it strikes.

“We’re headed toward being more predictive and preemptive, and more personalized in the delivery of therapies,” he continued. “That requires a more fundamental understanding of the cellular molecular mechanisms that lead to disease, the genetic basis of disease, and the development of technologies that will allow us to ascertain that the disease process is likely to occur.”

NIH-Funded Research Developments
Pettigrew reviewed some of the latest NIH-funded research developments in four areas -- nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, bioinformatics and robotics, and image-guided intervention – to highlight both the challenges and the promise of 21st century medicine.

In such areas as nanotechnology, new biosensors and techniques such as cellular molecular imaging are helping scientists peer into blood vessels, arteries and organs, and detect plaque buildups or cancer clusters much earlier than was previously possible. Other avenues of research, such as regenerative medicine using embryonic stem cells, promise to revolutionize health care.   

Biosensor to stimulate damaged muscles.

Image-guided surgery, especially microsurgery, stands to benefit tremendously as medicine continues to move along with engineering and robotics into the operating theater, Pettigrew continued.
 
“The particular approach that Yale took resulted in a significant increase in the percentage of seizure patients for whom surgery was possible, and not only offered but improved because it took 90 minutes less time to perform,” Pettigrew said. “In addition to that, it virtually eliminated significant neurological deficit after the surgery, that is, there was no visual or significant motor or sensory losses.”

Pettigrew is a pioneer in the field of dynamic 3-D imaging of the heart using magnetic resonance (MRI). Much of that work was done at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was a professor of radiology, medicine (cardiology) and bioengineering and director of the Emory Center for MR Research. He also co-developed the first computer software package specifically designed for cardiac imaging using MRI.

In 2002, he was named the first director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, whose charter is to “improve health by supporting fundamental research in bioengineering and bioimaging science, and transferring the results to medical applications.”

Retinal implant to restore some vision in the blind.

Morning Sessions
During the morning sessions, Viterbi School biomedical faculty presented reviews of their work to update colleagues and stimulate discussions of their research.  Topics included computational systems engineering, presented by David D’Argenio, professor of biomedical engineering and holder of the Chonette Chair in Biomedical Technology; and bioimaging and imaging informatics, presented by Kirk Shung, an expert in ultrasound imaging and professor of biomedical engineering, and Brent Liu, professor of radiology and biomedical engineering. 

Imaging research at NIBIB does not focus on any particular disease, Pettigrew noted.  NIBIB is one of 27 components of the National Institutes of Health, but unlike other NIH institutes, it spans the full spectrum of human disease. Projects that are funded are highly interdisciplinary and usually reflect the degree to which the physical and biological sciences have merged as scientists look for new technologies to improve health.

In the afternoon, participants listened to presentations from researchers at the Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems (BMES) Center on neural prosthetics, including Mark Humayun’s research to design artificial retinas; Gerald Loeb’s work to reanimate paralyzed muscles; and Ted Berger’s work to build replacement parts for the brain.

Bartlett Mel, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, presented his work on computational vision, followed by a discussion of medical device research and development, presented by Loeb and Peter Staudhammer, director of the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering.

The lectures and keynote speaker were part of the Viterbi School’s centennial lecture series, being held throughout the year, in honor of 100 years of engineering at USC.