Bridging cardiovascular physics, physiology, and clinical practice: Karel H. Wesseling, pioneer of continuous noninvasive hemodynamic monitoring

摘要

karel hendrik wesseling (Fig. 1), emeritus professor of bio-medical instrumentation, was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, on April 23, 1935. He studied electrical engineering, in his words, from 1950 on, and since 1953 at the Delft University of Technology (DUT) from which he graduated with honors in 1960. Subsequently, he worked at the DUT, did military service at the Dutch Air Force, and returned to the DUT to work in active networks. After that, he worked in radio astronomy, first in a European project and later in the United States at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV; Charlottesville, VA; and Tucson, AZ; eventually as head of the mm-wave laboratory. In 1969, he moved back to The Netherlands "to marry a Dutch girl," as he put it. Indeed, he married Hanny Gommers in 1971. He started working in the TNO Institute of Medical Physics in Utrecht with Professors Dick H. Bekkering and Jan E. W. Beneken and became head of the Cardiovascular Physics group in 1976. Here he developed several computational models of physiological systems, laying the basis for his later work on baroreflex, calculation of cardiac stroke volume from arterial pressure and of pressure transfer functions. His special interest was to obtain physiological parameters in a noninvasive manner. In 1984, he brought his group, now called TNO Biomedical Instrumentation, to the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam. In 1990, he was appointed professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Eindhoven University of Technology.