Hands-on learning is a hallmark of an MSOE education. For the biomedical engineering program, however, it can be challenging to find opportunities for students to work with healthcare technology such as MRIs or CT scanners as they are large, regulated clinical devices. To address this, Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering Department faculty members Paul Licato, adjunct associate professor, and Dr. Larry Fennigkoh ’74, ’86, professor emeritus, took matters into their own hands and designed and fabricated a one-of-a-kind optical CT scanner to provide students with hands-on learning experiences in the BME 4210 Medical Imaging Systems course.

The optical CT scanner they created operates on the same principles as Computed Tomography (CT), except instead of using X-rays rotating around a human to construct an image of what’s inside the body, the optical scanner uses a rotating object that passes through a stationary beam of light to reconstruct a 3D image of the object. Students in the Medical Imaging Systems course were able to control the device and work with the algorithm to reconstruct the image of an object being scanned.

Students used the optical CT scanner for the first time in the Fall Semester and valued seeing the inner workings of the scanner and testing their different theories in a controlled environment.

“For me, it really helped boost my understanding of the course content,” said Ben Williams, senior biomedical engineering student. “It was really cool to actually see the process from the image acquisition, all the way to getting it to the 3D volume on our computers.”

Prior to having this equipment in the classroom, the students would work with mock data. This new equipment allowed them to utilize data directly from the scanner. “Actually being able to play around with the data and knowing where that data came from, instead of just being given a dataset that we had never seen before, was really helpful,” said Williams.

Some classes in the past had the chance to visit the Medical College of Wisconsin or Froedtert to see a CT scanner or MRI in action. Now having the optical CT scanner at MSOE, students have more freedom to experiment. “In a clinical setting you can’t exactly experiment with X-ray settings,” explained Grant Glorioso, senior biomedical engineering student. “With the optical scanner we could experiment, make mistakes and see how different inputs can ruin a scan in a safe environment.”

The Medical Imaging course introduces students to medical imaging modalities and the foundations of image processing. For seniors approaching graduation, working with different equipment offers valuable insight as they begin to search for careers. “I am interested in the clinical engineering field, so the troubleshooting aspect of working with the scanner was really helpful,” said Joseph Pearson. “And seeing how something works in order to fix it was also really important to learn.”

Working with the scanner helped senior Zach Peterson feel more prepared for his manufacturing engineering internship at Forge Medicals. Peterson explained his team is working on developing a new product that has intravenous imaging with ultrasound and optical CT. “Without this experience, I would not have had any idea what optical CT was, so I was actually able to see something in industry that I had experience with,” said Peterson.

Licato and Fennigkoh spent the summer building the optical CT scanner. They joked it was their version of “senior design.” Although building the scanner had its challenges, the reaction from students made it worth it.

“Seeing students go, ‘wow! This is cool!’ That was the best feedback,” said Licato.  

“That was all the feedback we needed,” added Fennigkoh. “When you see those light bulbs going off and when you hear stuff like that, that’s precisely why we’re here as educators. I don’t think we can get a greater reward than that.”

This was the first year the scanner was used. Licato and Fennigkoh plan to make a few tweaks and improvements and look forward to more students to working with the technology and having their own “ah-ha!” moments.