IIT Kharagpur’s Medical Imaging Course by International Expert to enhance Students’ Research and Career Prospects in Medical Technology

Kharagpur: IIT Kharagpur has been conducting a course on “Instrumentation and algorithms for biomedical imaging: MRI and Ultrasound”, a stepping stone for students into the highly challenging medical imaging industry.
Medical imaging is a multi-billion-dollar industry today and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.7% by 2025 with a rapid advancement in medical and diagnostic imaging devices. Also, medical imaging and image guided therapy are important sources of employment, with a large number of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineers being employed in both the public and private sectors. However, today there are only a handful of academic programs (mostly in medical imaging or medical physics) that focus on training students to enter these fields.
IIT Kharagpur under its Shri Gopal Rajgarhia International Program is addressing this issue of keeping students abreast of the latest trends in global academics through classroom teaching and research projects by distinguished international faculty experts and generate an interest in specific fields. The current course is imaging sciences which is being taught by international experts Soumyajit Mandal faculty at the Case Western Reserve University, USA. The course is aligned towards instrumentation and signal processing algorithms or strategies while focusing on physics and engineering of the applicable methods.
Dr. Mandal, said, “The typical course on imaging methods deals either with the physics of the problem as in how images are created or what is the physical phenomenon involved, or the clinical aspects. My course will focus on the engineering of the system, say what sort of circuits are used, and such like.” Mandal graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2002 has won several awards for exemplary work in the field of bioinspired electronic circuits and medical imaging.
Dr. Sudip Nag from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering at IIT Kharagpur who is facilitating the program opined, “This course is an awesome platform to learn about basic medical imaging physics, smart circuit design approaches, and futuristic signal processing strategies. This course has been expanded through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound imaging as the prime thematic areas, while simultaneously dealing with the latest and upcoming trends in portable healthcare image acquisition, reconstruction methods, and machine learning integration in healthcare.”
Prof. Anandaroop Bhattacharya, Associate Dean, International Relations, said, “The SGRIP program aims at bringing eminent researchers across the world to IIT Kharagpur to share their research work with our students and faculty. The initiative goes a long way in stimulating the learning environment and promoting collaborative research.”
This particular course work exposes our students to cutting-edge research in one of the emerging fields of science. It is being attended mostly by MTech or PhD students. Baisakhee Saha, a woman scientist associated with the Institute’s School of Medical Science and Technology, who is attending the course said, “I am interested in micro-CT imagery and keen to know about the advance of cellular imagery. I am looking forward to the course for new directions.”