Course Introduction MATLAB with examples from Health Science

The Course, C171/12 Introduction MATLAB with examples from Health Science, is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, autumn 2021.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Aim: To provide participants basic understanding of the programming environment MATLAB. Enable participants to use built-in MATLAB functions and create own scripts and functions for data evaluation and visualization.

Learning outcomes: After completion of the course, the student should be able to understand and be able to use:

1. The MATLAB program in general including editor, command window, and help
2. MATLAB data structures including matrices, cells and structs
3. Generic programming principles including loops, conditions, functions
4. MATLAB graphics for plotting and vitalization of data
5. MATLAB Debugging capability

Contents: The course is divided into four days and contains these topics:

Day 1       Fundamentals and visualization

                   The MATLAB environment, loading and saving data, basic matrix operations.

                   Basic plots, including 2D and 3D plots, image visualization.

 Day 2      Basic Programming: Functions

                   Scripts, functions, debugging and “good practice” in programming.

Day 3       Basic Programming: Loops and Conditions

                   Loops and conditions

Day 4       Data Handling

                   Logical data, relational operations, logical indexing. Data types (strings, cell, struct, tables etc.)

                   Importing/exporting data.

The lessons will be a mixture of teaching and training. During the day, you will get data and script files for the training.

The audience for this course is primarily scientists within the area of health-research, who plan to employ MATLAB for analysis of data. Other scientists using MATLAB for the first time may also benefit from the course, even though data examples are on patient information, data time series and neuro-imaging data.

Course material: Lecture notes and other material will be provided during the course.

Recommended knowledge for participation: No basic knowledge is required. Students must bring own laptop with MATLAB installed (version 2020 or later).

Involvement/Evaluation: The course alternates between short lectures and computational problems. Expect preparation in between course dates: We invite you to hand in the class-room exercises to get personal feedback. Mandatory assignment (pass/fail, internal examination).

Instructors: Irene Klærke Mikkelsen, Christine Ahrends, Peter Mondrup Rasmussen

Venue: Loftsalen (1266-316), The Victor Albeck Building, Vennelyst Blvd. 4, 8000 Aarhus C

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Research Year students and Research Honours Programme students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at member universities of the Nordoc network
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 15 November 2021 09:00 - 16:00
• 17 November 2021 09:00 - 16:00
• 19 November 2021 09:00 - 16:00
• 23 November 2021 09:00 - 16:00