It is a great honour for UTC
to host and organize this 7th International Conference
on Computational Bioengineering
that brings together modelling experts
in biomechanics,
mechanical engineering, signal processing
and bio-computation.
The overall aim is really to get to understand
how the human body functions and thereby
to discover innovative solutions for 'repairs'
in malfunctioning human bodies.
Our meeting today aims to upate each other
on our research activities.
Our aim to see how we can combine
technological progress
with progress in imaging techniques and sciences
where UTC is a front runner
internationally.
We wish to be able to develop
techniques that will prove useful
a few years hence in clinical situations
so that we can improve
the life quality factor for patients.
The human body is a highly complex organism,
so we must endeavour to integrate
this complex nature and subdivide it
into engineering language terms,
in short, to consider the body
somewhat like a machine.
So we must try to be capable
of characterizing the body
as a whole entity,
see how it moves,
see and analyse stresses and strains
when a body moves,
identify what clinical approaches
can improve a given therapy,
and then, at the body scale itself,
to see the results of stress
and strain
on life styles,and
on the body tissues themselves,
so, we really must prepare
multio-scaled models
running from body to tissues
and even to cell level
and that is a truly huge challenge
we ar setting ourselves.
UTC already has a solid reputation
in 'biomechanics',
notably in computational models of biomechanical systems
both solids and fluids,
moreover, as we are adepts of interdisciplinarity
I feel we have an opportunity here
to bring the experts, so to say, face to face.
It is no easy matter to bring experts
from different specialties together
knowing that our common goal
is a very complex system
viz., the human body
As was said earlier ,
we have a living system that interacts,
a fluid-solid interaction,
at varying scales
and it is through confronting these multiple
approaches that we shall hopefully make important progress.