Medical Physics

Looking beyond the capabilities of the human eye has enabled medical professionals to diagnostically image a human body. Physicists have harnessed the breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, electrical conductivity and sound waves to visualise images of the human body that our naked eye would never be able to see.

X-rays, ultrasonic waves and radio-waves are a selection of the tools currently been used for imaging. The advent of the computer age has meant that images can now be interpreted and manipulated digitally. Critical decisions are made both by humans and machines on the basis of this information.

Medical Physics encompasses the creation of the image, the information carried by the image, the interpretation of the image and the medical emergencies that would need such images to be produced to understand the changes in anatomy and physiology. In this unit, students investigate questions such as:

• What can we see beyond our own sight?

• How can we see beyond the skin?

• What is in our body that enables images to be made?

Students will then build upon that knowledge to investigate medical imaging techniques such as ultrasound, X-ray, echocardiogram (ECG) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Students also learn principles of digital imaging and explore the extraction of information from digital images as well as digital image manipulation.

Students will then focus on the anatomy and physiology of the body to enable them to make decisions about which imaging techniques would be most suitable in the diagnosis of a range of conditions related to the heart, pregnancy and trauma.

Examples of student work