General Course Information

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Course Concept

• Goals
• Prepare students for advanced projects or research
• Providebackground for medical & premedical students
• Emphasis on Computer Integrated Surgery and Therapy Delivery
• Applications
• Technology
• Cost-effectiveness and deployment issues
• Underlying technical content relevant for other areas of research with strong geometrical basis
• Not emphasized: Symbolic reasoning, informatics, data mining, etc...

Structure of the Course

• Lectures by professor
• Guest Lectures
• Surgeons & other clinical users
• Health economist
• Regulatory person
• Other researchers
• Homework-work in teams
• Optional Projects
• Typically effort comparable to major term paper
• Jointly "mentored" with end user
• Lay groundwork for larger implementation in spring (600.446/646)

Grades

• 4 graded homework assignments
• midterm, final exam
• optional project
• can "throw out" one homework or one exam
• flexible weighting formula for the rest

 
grade = (wh-wph) x homework + (we-wpe) x exams + (wph+wpe) x project
 
where wh, we, wph, and wpe may be set by the student subject to constraints:
 
40<=wh,we<=60
wh+we=100
 
and wph and wpe are subject to project-dependent limits you need to negotiate with me, based on project proposal.