Electromagnetics in Emerging Medical Technologies

Speaker: Dr. Jayanti Venkataraman

Professor,  Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering Department

Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY  

Abstract: The rapid advances in analog and digital technology have enabled electromagnetics to be applied in a wide range of wireless medical sensor technologies that have revolutionized healthcare. The role of Electromagnetics in medical technologies can be broadly classified in two categories: One, as therapeutic and diagnostic that is based on EM wave propagation in biological tissues, and the other as healthcare monitoring through wireless medical telemetry. Techniques for diagnosis through EM waves faces challenges in that it competes with very well-known and well established technologies such as MRI, nuclear imaging, invasive glucose monitoring, mammography, CT scans etc.  Whereas wireless medical telemetry service (WTMS) has been widely embraced by the medical community.  WMTS provide a variety of healthcare monitoring. Medical body area networks (MBAN) are efficient, flexible systems with constant availability, re-configurability and unobtrusiveness. Sensors can be placed in or on the human body to measure specified physiological data, continuously in real time, and also to provide location-based information and patient-specific information and make these accessible to the doctor whenever and wherever required. There is ongoing research in a wide range of therapies with EM waves related to oncology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, endocrinology through noninvasive techniques and microwave imaging.  In this presentation, the state-of-art of electromagnetics in emerging medical technologies will be summarized. A few applications will be discussed in greater detail based on research at RIT.

 Bio: Dr. Jayanti Venkataraman is a Professor in the Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering Department at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY, USA. She is the Director of the Electromagnetics Theory and Applications (ETA) Laboratory where she has developed the area of Electromagnetics for the EE undergraduate and graduate programs. Her research interests are design and optimization of antennas and microwave circuits, composite right/left handed metamaterials and applications, wearable and implantable antennas for medical applications, wireless interconnects for Network-on-Chip and bio-electromagnetics. She is also very passionate about Electromagnetic Education. She is the 2001-02 recipient of the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the 2007 IEEE Region-1 award for establishing a unique educational experience in the area of Electromagnetics, Microwaves and Antennas.

Speaker(s): Dr. Jayanti Venkataraman,

Location:
Room: 109
Bldg: Robert B. Goergen Hall
University of Rochester
Rochester , New York
14627