Strong Biomedical Engineering and Bio/medical physics programs?

[DeadCactus]

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Anyone happen to know any programs strong in either of these fields?

Edit: Specifically in the area of therapeutic and imaging applications of lasers.

 

[LaDandouna]

In terms of imaging programs per say, Penn just started an imaging-only PhD program that is supported by HHMI-NIBIB. MD/PhD students have the option to join as a BE PhD student. Here is the link:http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ime/phdprogram/home.html.

In terms of other programs with strong BE programs, you might want to look at Duke, Hopkins, Harvard/MIT, USC/CalTech, Emory/GeorgiaTech, WashU and Baylor/Rice. They all have excellent imaging faculty. It all depends on the specific imaging field that you want to go into. Feel free to PM me if you want more information. I was specifically looking at BE imaging programs when I applied last year.

As for medical physics programs, UT MD Anderson has an excellent program. I think it is one of the best in the country.

 

[Mazelia]

Case (CWRU) has an established BME program, as well as a dedicated Center for Imaging Research (http://ccir.uhrad.com/). I'm not sure if it encompasses the research areas that you're interested in, but the director of the aforementioned center was recently appointed to be the head of the biomedical engineering department, so I imagine that all things imaging are going to be pretty well supported. 🙂

 

[MSTPbound]

Also consider Columbia:

http://bme.columbia.edu/

 

[PBandJ]

Anyone happen to know any programs strong in either of these fields?

Edit: Specifically in the area of therapeutic and imaging applications of lasers.

Since it sounds like you're more into biomedical optics than imaging, you may want to look into Boston University. Dr. Irving Bigio does some great work in biomedical optics (specifically with non-invasive optical cancer detection using lights / lasers).

However, since you're posting here, I'm guessing you're interested in MD/PhD or similar dual-degree programs. Just FYI, BU is not well known for having a very well organized (or well funded) MD/PhD program.

 

[DeadCactus]

I'm looking for programs strong in both optics and imaging, though I am indeed leaning more toward the Optics side of things. (I mean come on, who doesn't think lasers are awesome? Pew pew! )

It's a shame to hear BU's MD/PhD program has a bad rep, though. They had actually caught my attention. I might have to check out their Master's program as a back up though...

 

[hatePreMeds]

Cactus,

Check out the MD/PhD program at Pitt/CMU (Carnegie Mellon). I'm not sure if you're into Image Processing and robotics, because CMU is a leader in computer vision. If you are looking into molecular imaging, there is a major research group at Stanford.

 

[DeadCactus]

A question just popped into my head: Does the research you want to do affect your admission decision? Do people interested in going to a field less represented by MD/PhDs but still well within the scope of the physician-scientist goal tend to have less competition?

For example, if you have 2 people wanting a PhD in x and 6 people wanting a PhD in y, are they more likely to say "We'll take one of the x fellows and two of the y fellows" or "We'll take three of the eight"?

Edit:

hatePreMeds, thanks for the suggestion. The program actually looks really awesome. It's in a different direction than I was looking, but some of the stuff sounds like stuff I'd love to be involved with and like the stuff I originally got into engineering wanting to do.

 

[PBandJ]

A question just popped into my head: Does the research you want to do affect your admission decision? Do people interested in going to a field less represented by MD/PhDs but still well within the scope of the physician-scientist goal tend to have less competition?

For example, if you have 2 people wanting a PhD in x and 6 people wanting a PhD in y, are they more likely to say "We'll take one of the x fellows and two of the y fellows" or "We'll take three of the eight"?

Edit:

hatePreMeds, thanks for the suggestion. The program actually looks really awesome. It's in a different direction than I was looking, but some of the stuff sounds like stuff I'd love to be involved with and like the stuff I originally got into engineering wanting to do.

I think it depends on the program. Any decisions to limit the number of people who want to do a particular field of research would mainly be because of resource limitations (i.e. if five MD/PhD applicants all applying the same year want to do research with the same PI, it might be a problem). This might be a good question to ask around to the admin staff at various programs you're interested in.

But as far as I know, at least for the admissions decision part, MD/PhD applicants are all in the same pool together at most schools. Especially when you consider how many people don't know exactly what they want to do for their PhD when they come in, it makes sense for the programs to operate this way. So it probably wouldn't make you more competitive to plan to enter a less-popular PhD field for your MD/PhD.

 

[Maxprime]

UCLA has a fantastic imaging department - don't know about your specific interest though.

 

[Neuronix]

http://www.acadrad.org/showpage.aspx?page=fy2007_radiology_department_rankings

I think that list is a pretty good sampling of who's good in imaging. The one thing to note is that some places are more clinically oriented (Sloan Ketting) and some are more basic science oriented (U of Minnesota) and you won't necessarily know that unless you're in the field. That being said it's a good rough estimate of where is good to look at. You wouldn't go wrong just applying to the top 15 or 20 places on that list that have MSTPs associated.

I don't pay attention to laser imaging because to be perfectly frank and offend a lot of people, optical imaging/spectroscopy has almost no new clinical potential based on their intrinsicly low penetration depths in tissue.