Lalitha ... Thank you so much for your kind and detailed answers to my dilemma. I will take each to heart and perform the recommended research work.

Yup, as for my lack of life science background, I intend to 'concentrate on the specific area that pertains to my project. Good advice, thanks!

As for my lack of interest in body fat sensors, HR monitors, I meant that the electronic circuits were so simple that they couldn't warrant qualification for an MS thesis. A simple cursory look on google will show you DIY hobbyists designing their own HR and BM circuits. Normally college seniors in EE or BME build these circuits for their senior projects. But if there's something inherently lacking in HR/BM devices overall, I'll try to find it and see if I can fix it in my design.

All signal processing functions (1-D,2-D) would be done via Matlab. I'll see what issues still exist today that have not been successfully resolved yet.

Thanks again for the help. Greatly appreciated :-)

- David

digital signal processing algorithms using specific databases as MIT-BIH...

Thx Zoltan!

Hi David,

I understand your dilemma. Many years ago I took much the same path from the other end.  I went from an M.S. in zoology to a Ph.D. in biological engineering as the discipline was called back then.  Ultimately, if you intend to make a career in biological engineering, you will need to bite the bullet and acquire a working knowledge of at least some areas of biology and chemistry.  In the meantime, you might try looking in the university library at the masters theses in biological engineering.  There are any number of viable problems that are approachable with the tools that you already have.  Look for a thesis adviser whose research area interests you and see if a thesis topic pops up there.  You obviously have a good sense of how to scope a potential topic and will avoid getting into situations where the necessary equipment is not already available, etc. Setting out into a new career in a new discipline is exciting and can be most rewarding.  Best of luck in your venture.

Ernie Guignon

Thx Ernie ... I agree with your sentiment here. Yes, I first checked with some of my advisers and their suggestions were too heavy on the biology side of things (neural cells and stem cells), which honestly frightened me since I have no background in that area and doubted the project could be completed within 5 months (or less). Sadly very few of our professors conduct any active research so the choices of available topics are slim. indeed. I'm not shying away from the biology/chemistry but wanted to be realistic enough to only know what was necessary and needed for my project w/o going crazy :)

Most of the past theses in our library are biology tissue or chemistry based so they are not of much use to me unfortunately. I will search out other MS theses from other universities and if all else fails, I'll do a signal/image processing based project, such as feature extraction, as a last resort. We have done many variations of the 'accurately detect the onset of epilepsy from an EEG signal' at our college, so will try to avoid that topic.

A rapidly evolving area of very diverse  needs may be described broadly as “Independence Engineering”: Solutions for people living with disabilities, chronic disease or who are simply frail and aging, can incorporate significant innovation or adaptation of our existing technologies. It may not seem as sexy as many of the historical advances that leap to mind when thinking of Biomedical Engineering, but the marketplace is huge and growing, and many of the innovations require less life science knowledge. Understanding of neurotransmission, the cardiac cycle or the workings of the immune system are hardly vital to be effective .  Just an idea, Good Luck!....GW

Point well made Graham but my interest in the end is in disease diagnosis and/or curing so as others have said, I'll have to bite the bullet and learn the life sciences myself. I'd never heard of the term Independence Engineering and from your description, it seems more suited for folks with mostly mechanical engineering background than BME in my opinion but I could be wrong here :)