Ofer Barnea, PhD
Professor of BME
Dept of Biomedical Engineering
About Me
I received my BSc degree in EE from Tel Aviv University and a PhD in BME at Drexel University. I joined the Program of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at TAU in 1989 and was among of the four founders of the Department. For six years I was the Chair of the Department. I initiated an entrepreneurship program for novel Medical Devices that operated several years, training exposing students to the world of the entrepreneur. I have always been active in the industrial arena, started several companies and consulted to many others.
I have many hobbies, probably to many: taichi, skiing, sailing, scuba diving, of-road trips, boat building and recently building sound systems.
My Research
My research is focused on elucidating physiological mechanisms in health and disease to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic methods. I use mathematical models of physiological systems and direct them to clinical applications. I develop biomedical measurements and instrumentation in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems areas.
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I started working with Prof Sid Deutch at TAU, continued with Prof Dov Jaron at Drexel University and then returned to TAU. Over the years I studied the heart, the circulation, the lungs, oxygen transport, labor and fetal assessment, the sympathetic/parasympathetic system, urology, mechanisms of penile erection and more. My present focus is blood supply to the brain and its interaction with CSF and swelling brain cells (edema). This is specific to TBI, SAH, and ICH - i.e. in the injured brain.
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Omer Doron, a neurosurgeon, had an urge to get a PhD in BME. This is how I found myself probing into this part of the body and started collaborating with Prof Guy Rosenthal, head of Neurocritical Care at Hadassah. We developed a device that can both measure an incredibly important parameter for patient management and can also augment blood flow to the injured brain.
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Yulia Zadka developed a model that links ICP to blood flow and actually demonstrates how arterioles, in their autoregulation role, control blood flow, while increased ICP causes a shift the control to the veins that are compressed by elevated ICP and are constricted resulting in larger resistance than the arteriolar resistance. This is an important concept that neurosurgeons should consider when treating TBI patients. Kept autoregulation does not necessarily imply that blood flow is adequate everywhere in the brain.
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Abed's study shows that adequate mathematical models can mimic the intracranial physiology to explain waveforms generation in the brain leading to development of new diagnostic techniques (from a paper by PhD candidate Abed Nassir). Two models used to predict intracranial pressure waveforms using arterial pressure waveform as an input - one that includes correct elements and structure and one that does not. The one that does include these elements is capable of predicting ICP waveforms that are very similar to those measured in TBI patients and can suggest an explanation to the specific waveform morphology and its relation to specific pathology.
Adequate model
Inadequate model
Latest Publications
Mechanisms of reduced cerebral blood flow in cerebral edema and elevated ICP
Just accepted to JAPPL, this paper is a second in a series on a novel model that describes intracranial fluids interactions. It suggests mechanisms that affect blood flow in traumatic brain injury. Basically we are trying to stress that the major effect of edema is elevated ICP and restriction of blood flow via venous collapse.
Doctoral Students
The people that actually do the work
Abed Nassir
Ani Amar, PhD
Oded Luria, PhD
Yuliya Zadka
Sima Witman, PhD
Vered Caplan
Omer Doron, MD PhD
Prof Jamal Siam, PhD
Branislav Herman, PhD
Nadav Sheffer, PhD and me