The Bachelor End Project (BEP)
The Bachelor End Project (BEP) is the final project that you perform in your Bachelor education.
FAQ
In which format should the report be?
Your report should adhere to the structure of a scientific report, which means we expect it to include the following elements: title, abstract, introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusions, references. If you want to learn more about what should be covered in each element, you can find writing guides for scientific reports on the web.
The length of your report should be 6-8 pages, using the format of the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging journal. You can find the specifications here.
Appendices are allowed, for instance for a mathematical derivation or a piece of code. In addition, appendices may be needed to include more extensive descriptions of methods. Your thesis should be written at a level that a fellow student would be able to understand it. Such a person may have a similar background to yours, but may not know about specific techniques, which you can explain in an appendix if it does not fit in the paper. As an example, you do not explain the basics of MR imaging, but you would have to explain of UTE or CEST imaging.
The department requests a title page with specified information. We will provide a template for this.
Please note that you are to upload a digital version to the Department. You can find the link for this in the Education Guide, in the section on BEPs. You send your report to the people in your evaluation committee at least a week before the final presentation of your project.
Are there any tips for writing?
Start “writing” early – not your final report, but for example summaries of papers you read, or lab notes about your experiments. Just write for your future self or another student. This helps you think through what you did. The text you will write early on will probably not make it into your thesis, but it will speed up writing later on.
Ideally, write your report in LateX (this might be compulsory depending on your supervisor). You can do this online (like Google Docs) with ShareLateX or Overleaf, or offline by installing for example Miktex. This has several advantages:
- You learn a new skill
- Your work can be more easily used in a scientific publication
- You can version control your report if you want (with Github) – you could back to how your code & report looked like at different points during your project!
Think about who will read the report – not only your supervisor, but also staff members from other departments. Your report should be understandable for people not familiar with the exact research topic.
There will be a maximum length for the report. Write concisely – what information is essential, and what can be put into an appendix? How can you summarize the related literature or your experiments, without going over every detail?
What is expected of my code?
Ideally, use git/Github for version control of your code. More information is in this document.
Maintain a set of lab notes when you do experiments, including directories of data, annotated codes & versions, etc. These need to be sufficient to reproduce results without additional instructions.
Separate your parameters (like thresholds) from your main code. For example, define all parameters at the top of your script or in a separate file.
Your project might be in Python and you only used Matlab before. If so, there are resources that can help you switch between the two, see here.
At the end of the project, clean up your code. If your project is on Github, other students will be able to use it after you.
How do I plan and conduct a successful project?
You will be assessed on how independently you work on the project. This does not mean you have to do everything yourself, but you have to be responsible for your own planning, and also be responsible when it is time to ask for help.
To help you keep track of your progress, use can use a project management system, such as QDPM or Github. The planning of your work on the project, as visible in the system that you use will be part of your grade (ask your supervisor about the exact % of the grade).
First define an overall planning – when are you going to collect data, review literature, write code, write report etc? Plans are meant to change, but this will give you something to start with.
For each part, you can define milestones – for example that you have an implementation of code that does function X, or a draft of your “relevant literature” section.
Split the milestones into tasks that will help you achieve them. Define tasks so that they have a verb and are concrete. Compare “do literature research” to “read 5 papers on topic X and create notes”. Try to define at least two “next actions” which can be done independently, so if one thing doesn’t work (or you are tired of it), you can work on something else.
If you encounter a problem try to figure it out yourself, or with your team mate, first. If this does not lead to a solution, formulate your problem as concisely as possible and send an email (if urgent) or bring it to the next meeting.
Prepare to discuss your progress, questions and next goals/actions at our meetings. This is a helpful template for a meeting agenda. You can copy and paste such a template wherever you keep all the files for your projects, for example on Github.
What are the elements that I am judged on?
Your BEP is concluded by a report and a brief presentation for a small committee. This committee consists of your supervisor(s) and a member of staff from another group in the Department. If your supervisor is a postdoc or PhD student, a member of staff of the Medical Image Analysis group will join as well.
The time for your presentation is 10 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions.
The evaluation of your work is based on the following aspects (not necessarily with equal weights):
• Independence, analytical skills, creativity
• Practical / experimental skills
• Written Report
• Presentation