Biomedical engineering brings together bright minds from diverse disciplines, ranging from engineering, physics, and computer science to biology and medicine. This book contains the proceedings of the 11th Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, MEDICON 2007, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 2007. It features relevant, up-to-date research in the area.

Over the past three decades, the exploding number of new technologies and applications introduced in medical practice, often powered by advances in biosignal processing and biomedical imaging, created an amazing account of new possibilities for diagnosis and therapy, but also raised major questions of appropriateness and safety. The accelerated development in this field, alongside with the promotion of electronic health care solutions, is often on the basis of an uncontrolled diffusion and use of medical technology. The emergence and use of medical devices is multiplied rapidly and today there exist more than one million different products available on the world market. Despite the fact that the rising cost of health care, partly resulting from the new emerging technological applications, forms the most serious and urgent problem for many governments today, another important concern is that of patient safety and user protection, issues that should never be compromised and expelled from the Biomedical Engineering research practice agenda.

This book presents the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Electrical Bioimpedance, ICEBI 2007, combined with the 8th Conference on Electrical Impedance Tomography, held at the Graz University of Technology in Graz, Austria, in August 2007.

th On behalf of the organizing committee of the 13 International Conference on Biomedical Engineering, I extend our w- mest welcome to you. This series of conference began in 1983 and is jointly organized by the YLL School of Medicine and Faculty of Engineering of the National University of Singapore and the Biomedical Engineering Society (Singapore). First of all, I want to thank Mr Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman A*STAR who kindly agreed to be our Guest of Honour to give th the Opening Address amidst his busy schedule. I am delighted to report that the 13 ICBME has more than 600 participants from 40 countries. We have received very high quality papers and inevitably we had to turndown some papers. We have invited very prominent speakers and each one is an authority in their field of expertise. I am grateful to each one of them for setting aside their valuable time to participate in this conference. For the first time, the Biomedical Engineering Society (USA) will be sponsoring two symposia, ie “Drug Delivery S- tems” and “Systems Biology and Computational Bioengineering”. I am thankful to Prof Tom Skalak for his leadership in this initiative. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Prof Takami Yamaguchi for organizing the NUS-Tohoku’s Global COE workshop within this conference. Thanks also to Prof Fritz Bodem for organizing the symposium, “Space Flight Bioengineering”. This year’s conference proceedings will be published by Springer as an IFMBE Proceedings Series.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 7th Asian-Pacific Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering (APCMBE 2008). Themed "Biomedical Engineering – Promoting Sustainable Development of Modern Medicine" the proceedings address a broad spectrum of topics from Bioengineering and Biomedicine, like Biomaterials, Artificial Organs, Tissue Engineering, Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine, Biomedical Imaging, Bio MEMS, Biosignal Processing, Digital Medicine, BME Education. It helps medical and biological engineering professionals to interact and exchange their ideas and experiences.

Present Your Research to the World! The World Congress 2009 on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering – the triennial scientific meeting of the IUPESM - is the world’s leading forum for presenting the results of current scientific work in health-related physics and technologies to an international audience. With more than 2,800 presentations it will be the biggest conference in the fields of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering in 2009! Medical physics, biomedical engineering and bioengineering have been driving forces of innovation and progress in medicine and healthcare over the past two decades. As new key technologies arise with significant potential to open new options in diagnostics and therapeutics, it is a multidisciplinary task to evaluate their benefit for medicine and healthcare with respect to the quality of performance and therapeutic output. Covering key aspects such as information and communication technologies, micro- and nanosystems, optics and biotechnology, the congress will serve as an inter- and multidisciplinary platform that brings together people from basic research, R&D, industry and medical application to discuss these issues. As a major event for science, medicine and technology the congress provides a comprehensive overview and in–depth, first-hand information on new developments, advanced technologies and current and future applications. With this Final Program we would like to give you an overview of the dimension of the congress and invite you to join us in Munich! Olaf Dössel Congress President Wolfgang C.

The 4th European Congress of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Federation was held in Antwerp, November 2008. The scientific discussion on the conference and in this conference proceedings include the following issues: Signal & Image Processing ICT Clinical Engineering and Applications Biomechanics and Fluid Biomechanics Biomaterials and Tissue Repair Innovations and Nanotechnology Modeling and Simulation Education and Professional

14th Nordic – Baltic Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics – NBC-2008 – brought together scientists not only from the Nordic – Baltic region, but from the entire world. This volume presents the Proceedings of this international conference, jointly organized by the Latvian Medical Engineering and Physics Society, Riga Technical University and University of Latvia in close cooperation with International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) The topics covered by the Conference Proceedings include: Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering; Biomechanics, Artificial Organs, Implants and Rehabilitation; Biomedical Instrumentation and Measurements, Biosensors and Transducers; Biomedical Optics and Lasers; Healthcare Management, Education and Training; Information Technology to Health; Medical Imaging, Telemedicine and E-Health; Medical Physics; Micro- and Nanoobjects, Nanostructured Systems, Biophysics

The general theme of MEDICON 2013 is "Research and Development of Technology for Sustainable Healthcare". This decade is being characterized by the appearance and use of emergent technologies under development. This situation has produced a tremendous impact on Medicine and Biology from which it is expected an unparalleled evolution in these disciplines towards novel concept and practices. The consequence will be a significant improvement in health care and well-fare, i.e. the shift from a reactive medicine to a preventive medicine. This shift implies that the citizen will play an important role in the healthcare delivery process, what requires a comprehensive and personalized assistance. In this context, society will meet emerging media, incorporated to all objects, capable of providing a seamless, adaptive, anticipatory, unobtrusive and pervasive assistance. The challenge will be to remove current barriers related to the lack of knowledge required to produce new opportunities for all the society, while new paradigms are created for this inclusive society to be socially and economically sustainable, and respectful with the environment. In this way, these proceedings focus on the convergence of biomedical engineering topics ranging from formalized theory through experimental science and technological development to practical clinical applications.

Vietnam is a rapidly developing, socially dynamic country, where interest in biomedical engineering activities has grown considerably in recent years. The leadership of the Vietnamese government, and of research and educational institutions, are well aware of the importance of this field for the development of the country and have instituted policies to promote its development. The political, economic and social environment within the country offers unique opportunities for the international community and this conference was intended to provide a vehicle for the sharing of experiences; development of support and collaboration networks for research; and exchange of ideas on how to improve the educational and entrepreneurial environment to better address the urgent needs of Vietnam. In January 2004, under the sponsorship of the U.S. National Science Foundation, a U.S. delegation that consisted of Biomedical Engineering professors from different universities in the United States, visited several universities and research institutions in Vietnam to assess the state of development of this field. This delegation proposed a five year plan that was enthusiastically embraced by the international scientific communities to actively develop collaborations with Vietnam. Within this framework, in July 2005, the First International Conference on the Development of Biomedical Engineering in Vietnam was held in Ho Chi Minh City. From that conference a Consortium of Vietnam-International Universities was created to advise and assist the development of Biomedical Engineering in Vietnamese universities.