The heart of collaboration
When Bradley Clymer was an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University 25 years ago, he considered focusing his scientific interests on a career in medicine – and quickly decided that might not be his ideal career path.
Clymer, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is focusing much of his time outside the classroom on medical applications of electrical engineering. He is collaborating with a professor of medical physics in the College of Medicine’s Division of Radiologic Sciences and Therapy, using MRI to study the mechanical tissue properties of cardiac muscles.
Clymer explained that different cardiac muscles have different mechanical properties in different directions. Studying those constantly moving muscles requires specialized MRI techniques, which is where Clymer’s electrical engineering expertise comes into play.
“The nice thing about MRI is that it’s not invasive, so you can repeat it multiple times,” he said. “It doesn’t really interfere with the processes of the cardiac muscles that we’re trying to observe. Unlike tests involving radiation, you can repeat it as often as you care to without risking injury to the patient.”
The orientation of the muscle fibers in the miocardium and the cardiac muscles are key to the electrical and mechanical properties in the heart, Clymer explained. By studying how the muscles of a normal, healthy heart work it will be easier to see how diseases affect those muscles and evaluate the effects of various treatment strategies.
Because of the length of time it takes and the complexity of synchronizing an MRI with a moving heart, the current research is being done on animals. It will be some time before human tests are practical. But bringing an engineer like Clymer together with medical professionals creates some important synergies.
“For a long time I have thought the biggest advances in medicine and engineering are going to be in areas where those two disciplines interact with each other,” Clymer said. “Often, people working in medicine use technology without really understanding how it works. This kind of collaboration gives the engineers a chance to teach medical professionals the underlying physical principles and mathematics, and the medical professionals have the chance to teach the engineers how some of this science might be useful in a medical practice.”
For Clymer, this side of his work is rewarding in that it’s an opportunity to apply math to physical principles in real-world applications that benefit the world. That’s not to say Clymer doesn’t find the other side of his work – teaching – to be equally rewarding.
“I enjoy seeing the light bulb go on,” he said. “I especially enjoy teaching undergraduate students. I enjoy seeing the moment when they get it. And, in reality, research is really teaching. Very few faculty members do research on their own. We teach graduate students how to do research. I enjoy teaching graduate and undergraduate students how to formulate problems – how to identify what the problem is, propose a solution to the problem and verify that the solution is workable. That also means teaching students that there are lots of dead-end paths, and that that’s OK.”
