Open book examination to be completed and returned by 4:30 p.m. Friday, June 16, 1972. You may use any available references or your notes but do not consult with other students or staff regarding questions or answers.
1. “Pattern recognition” is a term that has been applied loosely to quite a few different biomedical procedures in which a computer assists a biologist or medical scientist in recognizing, identifying or evaluating quantitatively some life science entity. Distinguish clearly between these three features of recognition, identification and quantitation. Now report compactly from the literature five illustrations of biomedical pattern recognition including at least one from each of the three categories, explaining in each case the what, when, where, why and how of the illustrations.
2. Try to epitomize in ten one-sentence statements the most basic features of control systems, biological or technological, that are important to the Biophysical Sciences. Be sure to keep in mind the importance of feedback, feed forward and adaptive control systems.
3. The so-called “circadian rhythms” and the phenomenon of “absolute pitch” & discrimination are two examples of biological information-transduction and analysis that require phenomenally accurate - not only precise - quantitative biological performance. Select a well documented case of one of these from the literature, specify the performance reported and try to devise a biophysical basis on which the demonstrated performance might logically be explained.
4. An enormous amount of research and developmental effort and money has been spent on perfecting “non-invasive” transducers, computer analyses and interpretation of a) cerebral regional circulation, b) cardiac output and c) tumor detection. Select one of these fields and for it identify the principal experimental approaches that have arisen (quote your sources) and state which you consider the most reliable and useful of the available alternates, what it measures and how reliable or accurate it is. Try to be specific rather than encyclopedic.