PSU Magazine Spring 2003

arkinson's Disease primarily affects the elderly, but most of McNames' work is done with children. His chief colleague at OHSU, Dr. Brahm Goldstein , is a pediatrician and head of the Complex Systems Labora– tory (CSL) near the pediatric intensive care unit. The two met when McNames , having recently landed a faculty position at PSU, was making cold calls to local companies and research groups looking for someone with an interest in signal analysis. McNames, whose wife had been accepted to the Lewis & Clark law school as he finished his doctorate at Stanford, came to PSU initially for a 0.30 1020 0 10 20 30 40 0.25 0.2 e-- ii 0.15 g. J; 0.1 0.05 50 Goldstein doesn't just get McNames. lt's a package deal that involves graduate and undergraduate PSU engineering students. The collabo– ration has included several projects through senior capstones, a culminat– ing course that focuses on a commu– nity project. "Their level of energy and interest and enthusiasm is just fantas– tic," says Goldstein. So good, in fact, that he's hired several students. G oldstein and McNames are par– ticularly interested in brain trauma and severe infections in children. Monitoring equipment can measure changes in the pressure inside the cranium of both children and 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 one-year position and was later put on tenure track. As it turns out, Goldstein was the perfect fit for McNames. Goldstein had built a signal library-an archive of the signals pro– duced by medical monitoring equip– ment- and had been working with researchers at the University of Pitts– burgh to help analyze the data he col– lected. The long-distance relationship was good, but Goldstein needed some– one onsite to do the bulk of the analy– sis. "That's exactly what he does ," says Goldstein. "We fit each other's needs perfectly: 1 supply him with more data than he could possibly use, and he has the expertise in analysis. " Time (min) adults who have had head injuries as a result of falls, automobile collisions, and other accidents. lf pressure rises too much, blood flow to the brain can be cut off, resulting in permanent brain damage or death. Through ana– lyzing the monitor signals, McNames and Goldstein want to find a way to predict a patient's deterioration so doc– tors can take preventative steps ahead of an emergency. McNames was recently invited to submit grant pro– posals for this research to the Thrasher Foundation and the Doris Duke Chari– table Foundation. Such grants could result in sizeable, long-term funding. "The whole paradigm of how physi– ologic signals are being used is going to shift," says Goldstein, who has been doing this type of work for 30 years. Although McName's work is inextri– cably linked to OHSU, much of it hap– pens on the PSU campus. He founded PSU's Biomedical Signal Processing Lab– oratory not only to head up his own research, but to also provide students with a solid foundation in statistical data analysis and signal processing. As part of a 2001-2002 capstone project, he and four of his senior undergradu– ates developed a software "toolbox," publicly available on the lab's Web site, to help researchers perform quick pre– liminary analysis of monitor data. In another capstone project the year before, students created a laptop-based Prof. James McNames uses spectro– grams, such as the one at left, to study the relationship of respira– tion and heart rate. system to do real-time analysis of med– ical signals. As important as McNames' and Goldstein's research may become in how doctors treat patients, precious few people in academia are involved in it. Says Goldstein, "When it comes to this kind of research, we are one of the leading groups in the world. There are people at University of North Carolina, University of Texas, and Toronto Sick Children's Hospital, but we are light years ahead of them in what we've done. " D (John Kirkland, a Portland freelance writer; wrote the article "A Democratic Middle East?" in the winter 2003 PSU Magazine.) SPRING 2003 PSU MAGAZINE 13