Master of Science in Bioimaging

   1 year | full-time

2 years | part-time

boston university medical campus

The Master of Science Program in Bioimaging is designed to train individuals to fill a rapidly growing need for skilled experts in imaging and allied science and technology. Students benefit from hands-on experience with 1.5 and 3.0 T MRI, ultimately qualifying them for positions in the healthcare and biomedical instrumentation industries, image analysis, pre-clinical imaging, academia and a wide variety of private and government research centers.

The First Bioimaging Program

Bioimaging is a synthesis of many disciplines, both in terms of its burgeoning development and in terms of its myriad uses. People who work with bioimaging come from different backgrounds and have different goals. This self-contained, one-year bioimaging program is suitable for people from any discipline. The curriculum uses a minimum, though enough, of mathematics and physics to provide a 360-degree view of bioimaging and related topics in:

• Anatomy
• Image processing and artificial intelligence
• Analysis
• Ethics
• Radiation protection

After completing core courses, students have access to the state-of-the-art Center for Bioimaging, a research center for the Boston Medical Center and Philips Electronics, to conduct guided research and hands-on experience in imaging and image processing.

A Self-Contained Program to Develop Leaders in Bioimaging

Perhaps the fastest-growing evaluative tool in modern healthcare, bioimaging has become so increasingly sophisticated recently that the technology is now used in the pharmaceutical industry, the military, forensic science and even onto Wall Street and Madison Avenue. Boston University’s Bioimaging program prepares graduates to fill the gap between technicians trained to operate the instruments and the researchers, engineers and physicists who design and build them.

Image analysts center around the analysis and interpretation of visual data, such as photographs, satellite images, digital imagery, or video footage to extract meaningful information and insight from these data by applying analytical techniques and tools. The ability to process these images is an emerging field of interest that’s not only vital in healthcare but is often employed in geospatial intelligence, artificial intelligence, security, forensics, medical imaging, and pre-clinical scientific research using animals and other species.

These incredibly versatile image application tools may be used in the medical field to identify new models that support drug discovery or be employed to enhance the clarity of images of the Hubble telescope! In fact, the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes use scientific instruments such as cameras, spectrographs and capture data such as visible light, ultraviolet light and infrared radiation. In order to improve the classification of celestial objects and increase the quality of images, imaging processing techniques are applied by image analysts to reduce factors such as noise, distortion, and image artifacts. Essentially, image enhancement, object detection and classification, as well as data fusion and multispectral analysis are techniques that are being utilized in vast imaging applications.

Clinical and Research Paths

We train professionals in all aspects of bioimaging, from theory to practice. To satisfy the demand for the field’s broad imaging modalities, students have a choice between two 36 credit one-year degree options. Each path provides a general background in basic and advanced sub-disciplines of imaging and anatomy, encompassing the latest advances in imaging technologies, neurosciences and robotics. The two one-year tracks differ in their goals for the preparation of individuals entering the field.

• The Clinical Path provides students with the didactic education and ethics requirements necessary to sit for the ARRT advanced certification exam in MRI. This certification allows an individual to enter the bioimaging field as a Registered MRI Technologist.
• The Research Path provides students with a research-based focus, culminating in a thesis project that prepares the individual for entry into the broader fields of academia, industry, image analysis, pre-clinical imaging, and beyond.

It is anticipated that students will complete the bioimaging program in one academic year, however the program can be completed on a part-time basis.  Please contact Patricia Jones for more information.

Biomedical Imaging Center is Now Open

The recently renovated Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI) provides a broad range of advanced imaging capabilities for biomedicine and neurosciences to magnetic resonance physics and software engineering. The CBI houses two newly installed MRI scanners a 3T Philips MRI and a 9.4T Bruker BioSpec MRI, providing unique expertise. Read more about the Center for Biomedical Imaging here.