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Brandon Armstrong and Cris LaPierre

Medical image processing is pivotal in diagnosing diseases, planning treatment, and monitoring patients. Recent advances are revolutionizing how healthcare professionals understand and interact with complex medical conditions. This course is designed to equip engineers, scientists, and healthcare professionals with the in-demand skills to work with raw medical image data, enabling advancements in patient care and contributing to groundbreaking research in medical diagnostics and treatment strategies.

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Medical image processing is pivotal in diagnosing diseases, planning treatment, and monitoring patients. Recent advances are revolutionizing how healthcare professionals understand and interact with complex medical conditions. This course is designed to equip engineers, scientists, and healthcare professionals with the in-demand skills to work with raw medical image data, enabling advancements in patient care and contributing to groundbreaking research in medical diagnostics and treatment strategies.

Throughout this course, you will learn how to import and analyze common medical image formats, accurately view 2D and 3D images, and adjust image orientation and contrast for better analysis. The course takes you deeper into aligning and labeling 3D images like MRIs, equipping you with essential skills for segmentation and deep learning applications. By the end, you'll be proficient in identifying critical regions within medical images and extracting those regions for further analysis.

In this course, you will use MATLAB, the go-to choice for millions working in engineering and science. MATLAB is an intuitive, low-code environment. You will use the specialized Medical Imaging Toolbox to simplify importing and visualizing complicated medical data files so you can quickly accomplish your image processing tasks.

To be successful in this course, you should have some prior exposure to MATLAB. To familiarize yourself with MATLAB, complete the free, two-hour MATLAB Onramp. If you want more in-depth image processing skills, you can also enroll in the Image Processing for Engineering and Science specialization. The skills learned in the specialization can be applied to medical images.

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What's inside

Syllabus

Working with Medical Images
Working with Medical Volumes
Labeling Medical Images
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Traffic lights

Read about what's good
what should give you pause
and possible dealbreakers
Engineers, scientists, and healthcare professionals gain valuable skills for working with raw medical image data
Teaches image processing in the context of healthcare, making it relevant to learners who want to work in the medical or healthcare field
Covers in-demand skills for medical diagnostics and treatment strategies
Leverages MATLAB and the specialized Medical Imaging Toolbox, industry-standard tools for medical image processing
Requires prior exposure to MATLAB, potentially limiting accessibility for those without this background

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Reviews summary

Practical medical image processing with matlab

According to students, this course provides a solid and practical introduction to medical image processing using MATLAB. Many appreciate the hands-on approach with real-world medical image data, making the concepts highly applicable. Learners highlight the course's effectiveness in teaching how to import, analyze, and segment medical images, especially for those with some prior MATLAB exposure. While a strong foundation in MATLAB is recommended, it is largely seen as a valuable skill-building experience for engineers, scientists, and healthcare professionals. Some learners suggest that while it offers a robust foundation, more advanced topics might require further study.
Prior experience with MATLAB is truly essential for a smooth learning curve.
"Make sure you complete MATLAB Onramp or have solid prior experience; it's truly necessary for a smooth learning curve in this course."
"As a beginner in MATLAB, I found myself struggling a bit with the pace, so I highly recommend brushing up on it beforehand."
"The course moves quickly if you're not already comfortable with MATLAB syntax and environment; I wish I had practiced more."
Offers a strong introductory base, but is not a comprehensive deep dive.
"This course is a great starting point for medical image processing, but it doesn't go into highly advanced algorithms; it's more of an introduction."
"If you're looking for a comprehensive deep dive into every aspect, this course serves as an excellent foundation, though I wanted more advanced topics."
"I now have a solid understanding of the basics, though I'll need to explore more advanced techniques independently for my research."
Highly relevant for professionals in engineering, science, and healthcare.
"As an engineer transitioning into medical research, this course was exactly what I needed to bridge the gap in my skills."
"The skills learned here are directly applicable to my work in medical diagnostics, making it incredibly useful for my career."
"I feel much more confident working with medical image data after completing this course, it's invaluable for my professional development."
Material is presented in an understandable and engaging manner.
"The lectures were clear and concise, breaking down complex topics into digestible segments that I could easily follow."
"I found the instructor's explanations very easy to follow, even for challenging concepts, which made learning enjoyable."
"The course content is well-structured and doesn't get bogged down in unnecessary jargon, making it very accessible."
Skillfully leverages MATLAB and its specialized toolbox for image processing.
"Using MATLAB's Medical Imaging Toolbox was streamlined and well-explained, making complex tasks simpler for me."
"I appreciated how the course specifically leveraged MATLAB's capabilities for medical image analysis, a huge plus."
"My understanding of how to apply MATLAB to medical imaging problems significantly improved after this course."
Focuses on real-world medical imaging tasks, providing immediate applicability.
"The hands-on exercises using actual medical image data were incredibly helpful for understanding the practical applications, I feel much more confident now."
"I found the practical demonstrations and labs to be the most valuable part, immediately applicable to my work in radiology."
"The course does an excellent job of walking you through real-world scenarios, making it feel very practical and relevant."

Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Medical Image Processing with these activities:
Compile and Review Essential Course Materials
Reviewing course materials beforehand will help you establish foundational knowledge and prepare for upcoming lessons.
Show steps
  • Gather course syllabus, lecture notes, and assigned readings.
  • Organize materials in a logical and accessible manner.
  • Review materials to familiarize yourself with key concepts.
Course Materials Compilation and Review
Organize, consolidate, and review your course materials, such as notes, assignments, and quizzes, to improve retention and comprehension.
Show steps
  • Gather all course materials
  • Create a central repository
  • Review materials regularly
Explore Guided Tutorials on Medical Imaging Fundamentals
Reinforce your understanding of medical imaging concepts through structured tutorials, helping you build a solid foundation.
Show steps
  • Identify reputable online platforms or resources for medical imaging tutorials.
  • Review tutorials covering fundamental concepts, such as image formats, image enhancement, and segmentation.
  • Complete hands-on exercises and simulations to apply your knowledge.
Two other activities
Expand to see all activities and additional details
Show all five activities
Solve MATLAB Exercises for Image Processing
Sharpen your MATLAB skills and improve your ability to work with medical images through targeted practice exercises.
Show steps
  • Find online platforms or textbooks that offer MATLAB exercises for image processing.
  • Solve exercises covering topics such as image acquisition, manipulation, and analysis.
  • Review solutions and seek clarification on any challenging concepts.
Create a Medical Image Analysis Portfolio
Solidify your learning by applying your skills to real-world medical images, creating a portfolio that showcases your abilities.
Browse courses on Medical Image Analysis
Show steps
  • Gather a collection of medical images from publicly available databases or with appropriate permissions.
  • Apply image processing techniques to analyze and extract meaningful information from the images.
  • Document your analysis and present your findings in a portfolio.
  • Seek feedback on your portfolio from experts or peers.

Career center

Learners who complete Medical Image Processing will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

Reading list

We've selected 46 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Medical Image Processing.
The definitive mathematical canon of modern deep learning, establishing foundational theory across numerical computation, backpropagation optimization, autoencoders, and generative modeling.
Guides deep learning practitioners step-by-step through implementing transformer self-attention, token embeddings, and multi-layer perceptrons in pure PyTorch without relying on high-level wrappers.
Provides an essential hands-on manual for fine-tuning pre-trained transformer representations, covering transfer learning workflows, tokenizer optimizations, and production pipeline deployment.
This handbook presents advanced methods and state-of-the-art research in medical image computing and computer-assisted intervention, including significant content on medical image segmentation. It is written by leading authorities and provides a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners.
Illuminates modern generative neural architectures through celebrated visual diagrams and code workflows, covering contrastive embeddings, semantic search, and retrieval-augmented generation.
Examines production-grade engineering patterns for training and serving large language models, addressing distributed GPU training, synthetic data pipelines, and quantitative model evaluations.
This textbook is designed for engineering and science students learning numerical problem solving using MATLAB. It introduces theory to support key concepts and demonstrates applications using MATLAB. The book is suitable for an undergraduate course in numerical methods and includes examples and materials relevant to various engineering and science disciplines.
Presents an overview of advanced segmentation algorithms and their applications specifically in biomedical imaging. It covers the unique challenges and approaches in this domain. It valuable resource for those interested in the medical applications of image segmentation.
Focuses specifically on applying deep learning techniques to computer vision tasks, including image segmentation. It valuable resource for understanding contemporary approaches in the field, particularly those utilizing convolutional neural networks. It includes hands-on coding examples, making it practical for those looking to implement modern segmentation methods.
Emphasizes the practical use of MATLAB and Simulink for modeling, analysis, and design of control systems. It follows a practical approach with numerous examples and code. It good reference for undergraduates and professionals in control engineering.
Delivers an interactive, comprehensive curriculum teaching multi-layer perceptrons, convolutional neural networks, attention mechanisms, and optimization math with runnable multi-framework code.
Focuses on recognition, segmentation, and parsing of medical images using machine learning techniques. It provides insights into applying advanced approaches to medical image analysis challenges. It valuable resource for researchers and practitioners working on medical image segmentation.
Providing a concise and balanced overview of MATLAB's functionality, this book covers both fundamentals and applications. It's ideal for a first course on MATLAB or for an engineering problem-solving course. The book includes examples from various scientific and engineering areas and has been updated to include newer MATLAB features, making it a valuable resource for students and professionals.
Provides instruction on processing signals encountered in communications using MATLAB. It covers converting continuous time signals to digital signals and discusses processing methods like filtering, with a focus on applications in digital communications.
Introduces MATLAB for control systems engineering, focusing on practical hands-on instructions. It covers the MATLAB environment, programming, and the use of the Control Systems Toolbox for design and analysis. It is suitable for students and engineers working with control systems.
Provides an introductory to intermediate level text on image processing, utilizing MATLAB examples to illustrate key concepts. It takes a practical approach with numerous examples, exercises, and computer experiments.
Provides an introduction to machine learning concepts and their implementation in MATLAB. It covers key areas such as classification, regression, clustering, and neural networks with practical examples. It's a good starting point for those interested in applying machine learning techniques using MATLAB.
Provides a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of computer vision topics, including a thorough discussion of image segmentation. It delves into both the theoretical concepts and practical implementations. It is often used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses, making it a valuable resource for deepening one's understanding of the subject.
Details battle-tested infrastructure patterns for deploying deep reasoning models, addressing memory bandwidth limits, continuous GPU batching, semantic caching, and operational latency minimization.
Focuses on token segmentation, attention context preservation, and hierarchical chunking, giving deep learning engineers targeted techniques to maximize transformer retrieval accuracy.
Provides a practical introduction to programming concepts and data structures using MATLAB. It's a good resource for beginners to learn programming principles within the MATLAB environment.
Analyzes edge-inference architectures for open-weights neural models, tackling parameter quantization, GGUF execution, KV cache memory bottlenecks, and efficient desktop serving.
Demonstrates how to leverage PyTorch 2.0 compiler optimizations and torch.compile to accelerate transformer training, attention layer fusion, and distributed model parallelism.
Aims to help users master MATLAB, going beyond the basics to cover more advanced programming techniques and features. It's suitable for users who have a foundational understanding of MATLAB and want to enhance their proficiency.
Delves into the mathematical foundations of image processing and analysis, including advanced segmentation techniques based on variational methods and PDEs. It is suitable for those seeking a deeper theoretical understanding of segmentation algorithms. It is more valuable as additional reading for graduate students and researchers.
Delves into optimization techniques and their implementation using MATLAB. It covers various optimization algorithms and provides practical examples using MATLAB's Optimization Toolbox. It's suitable for those needing to perform optimization in their work.
Foundational text in digital image processing, covering a wide range of topics including image segmentation. It provides essential background knowledge and classical techniques that are crucial for understanding more advanced segmentation methods. It is widely used as a textbook in academic institutions. While not solely focused on segmentation, its comprehensive coverage makes it a valuable reference tool.
Is designed as a simple and concise introduction to MATLAB for beginners, particularly those in engineering. It starts with basic concepts and shows how MATLAB can be used to solve a wide range of engineering problems. The book is known for its just-in-time learning approach, providing information as students need it.
Teaches computer vision fundamentals through concrete deep learning examples, from object detection and image segmentation to face recognition and generative vision architectures.
Presents an engineering approach to computer vision and image analysis, with chapters dedicated to image segmentation. It covers various techniques and provides examples. It is suitable for academic use and self-study, offering a balanced view of theory and practical application.
Connects computational linguistics theory to modern neural NLP architectures, demonstrating how vector embeddings, recurrent networks, and self-attention capture semantic nuances.
Covers a broad range of computer vision topics, including image formation, feature extraction, and segmentation. It balances theory and practical applications. It can be a useful resource for gaining a solid understanding of the principles behind image segmentation within the broader context of computer vision.
Bridges technical interview theory and practical research insights, answering 30 crucial conceptual questions about neural architectures, gradient dynamics, and model evaluation.
Introduces core mathematical concepts and practical Python implementations of feedforward, convolutional, and recurrent neural networks for developers transitioning into deep learning.
Focuses on the mathematical foundations of computer vision, including probabilistic and graphical models relevant to segmentation. It provides a solid theoretical understanding of the techniques. It classic reference text suitable for advanced students and researchers.
Offers a practical, hands-on introduction to computer vision using the OpenCV library and Python. It covers various image processing tasks, including some fundamental segmentation techniques. It is particularly useful for beginners who want to implement basic segmentation algorithms and gain practical experience.
Bridges historical computation graph design and modern autograd engines, exploring how symbolic differentiation foundations paved the way for modern GPU tensor frameworks.
Centralizes feature extraction and image processing techniques relevant to computer vision, including aspects that are foundational to segmentation. It provides a comprehensive summary of methods used in computer vision applications. It useful resource for understanding the steps preceding or complementing image segmentation.
Explores the use of MATLAB in financial applications. It covers various financial concepts and demonstrates how to implement them using MATLAB's tools and functions. It's a specialized book for those in finance who need to utilize MATLAB for modeling and analysis.
While many MATLAB books focus on engineering and physical sciences, this book caters to behavioral scientists. It introduces MATLAB programming and its application in analyzing behavioral data, making it a niche but valuable resource for that specific audience.
Classic text covering the fundamentals of digital image processing, including essential concepts related to image segmentation. While older, it provides a strong theoretical foundation in the subject. It is more valuable as a historical reference and for understanding the origins of many image processing techniques.
Comprehensive introduction to pattern recognition and machine learning, providing the necessary statistical and mathematical background for many image segmentation techniques, particularly those based on classification and clustering. While not specific to image segmentation, it offers essential foundational knowledge for understanding the underlying principles.

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