Biomedical Signal-Image Processing and Modelling

Biomedical Signal and Image Processing (BSIP) constitutes a major field of interest for both educational aspects and in research environment in Biomedical Engineering (BME). In fact, the physiological knowledge improvement in a wide variety of innovative research, as well as the implementation in many clinical procedures, make use extensively of these concepts in more or less sophisticated medical applications. In this paper, the important links between BSIP and physiological modelling and their important derived synergies will be particularly stressed. At this purpose, examples will be provided in the areas of cardiovascular system studying, as well as in neurosciences and in the field of functional imaging, by using different modalities, including time-resolved functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Along this direction, the integration operation of the detected information between multiple signals, organs, modalities and across multiple scales (from gene/protein levels up to cell and organ levels) seems to be extremely promising. Further, advanced methods in the area of information treatment, like time-frequency, time-variant approaches will be investigated in the biomedical field together with the complexity measurements, most often carried out through nonlinear dynamical approaches where also in this context the integration between modelling and information processing plays a fundamental role. Finally, a few examples will be described in which the studying of electromagnetic fields (EMF’s), under the form of signals and images properly detected, might have a relevant impact into various biomedical applications.