Ultrasound Imaging
After the IDEAs module on ultrasound, I was fairly certain that I was not passionate about medical devices. Even though they are extremely important to BME, I always found the process of making the machines too technical and I was not really interested in it. Therefore, I was originally kind of bummed out when my IDEAs project was about designing a Guided User Interface (GUI) to compare to an ultrasound machine.
The past three weeks have actually been super interesting, though. I have spent numerous hours analyzing an microbubble destruction and replenishment with a Sequoia ultrasound machine. The process has actually been super interesting, and I feel like the work I have done in my independent research lab has helped me gain a stronger grasp of the material.
In regards to the actual design of the GUI, though, I have realized how much the design process we have been using in this class is applied in real life. Our team has been working with a client (Dr. Klibanov), in order to create a Matlab program that he has a need for. Since he admittedly does not have that much experience working with Matlab, we have catered the GUI to be as user-friendly as possible. We also have made adjustments that are convenient for him, compared to using the actual ultrasound machine. For example, Dr. Klibanov does not like how it is necessary to use a freehand trace in order to get a Region of Interest (ROI). In our initial prototype, the ROI was selected by drawing multiple connected line segments. This week, though, we changed it so that it was a freehand trace. Then when we met with him to show him our updated GUI, he emphasized that he preferred drawing with the line segments! Therefore, it is important to always properly identify the needs of a problem before designing something. I’m really excited to see how our final project turns out this week!
BME Design 