25th Southern Biomedical Engineering Conference 2009; 15 - 17 May, 2009, Miami, Florida, USA (IFMBE Proceedings)

th On behalf of the steering and organizing committees I would like to welcome you to sunny Miami Florida for the 25 Sou- ern Biomedical Engineering Conference. This year we are excited to have visitors from all over North America, South American, Europe and Asia to share exciting developments in all areas of Biomedical Engineering. The main objective of this conference is to bring together students, researchers and clinicians in Biomedical Engineering to disseminate technical information in this rapidly growing field, and provide a forum consisting of established as well as new and future researchers in this exciting engineering field. This year’s meeting features more than 140 high quality papers, many by students, for oral presentations and publication in the conference proceedings. The conference owes its success to the dedicated work of the keynote speakers, conference chairs, authors, participants, students, organizers, and the College of Engineering and Computing webmaster. We wish to especially acknowledge the work of the peer reviewers, program committee, staff of the BME Department, and the student organizing committee. We also wish to acknowledge the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation and the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering, and Simpleware, Ltd. We hope that you enjoy your experience, make new collaborations and lasting friendships.