Medical Imaging is how the inside of a living body is turned into a picture. The statewide description covers the fundamentals of the major imaging modalities: X-ray radiology, X-ray computed tomography, ultrasonography, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear imaging (PET and SPECT) and optical imaging.
%s It is the most widely carried course in the prefix and the one with the clearest agreement across Florida — five institutions, the same three credits, four of them using the same title. In a prefix where almost nothing else lines up, that is worth knowing: this is the BME course most likely to transfer without argument.
⚠ The course is also a genuine physics and mathematics course. Reconstruction is the inverse Radon transform, MRI is Fourier space made physical, and the reason images look the way they do is always a trade between resolution, noise, dose and time.
Carried by five Florida public institutions.
Named on the Biomedical Engineer career path. Imaging leads into the imaging manufacturers, clinical and hospital physics, image-analysis and AI roles in radiology, and research. ⚠ It is also one of the strongest routes into graduate study, and medical physics is an adjacent profession worth knowing about — it requires a graduate degree from an accredited programme and a residency, and it pays well.
⚠⚠ And a word about level, because it applies to every course in this prefix. O*NET reports that only 43% of employers treat a bachelor’s as sufficient for this occupation, against 26% naming a master’s and 13% a doctorate — by a wide margin the highest graduate expectation of any engineering discipline. Choose your upper-level courses with that in mind: the instrumentation, signals and imaging cluster is the most employable at bachelor’s level, while the tissue, neural and BioMEMS cluster largely assumes you intend to continue.
Five carriers, all at 3 credits, and four using the identical title Medical Imaging; USF adds “Introduction to”. ⚠⚠ In a prefix where the introductory course has four numbers across three levels and one prerequisite in five points at a course nobody carries, this is the number that behaves. If you are transferring, this is the one least likely to cause an argument.
FAMU and Florida State carry a 1-credit BME4531L Medical Imaging Laboratory; FIU, UF and USF do not. Where it exists it is usually a corequisite, so register for both — and where it does not, the laboratory content is generally folded into the lecture course rather than omitted.
The statewide prerequisite field for this number reads exactly that, which names no course and tells a planning student nothing. ⚠ In practice programmes gate it on signals and systems and on physics through electricity and magnetism. Read your own catalogue. It is a mild example of a problem this prefix has badly — see any other BME guide for the measured version.
Biomedical engineering is awarded at bachelor’s level by six Florida public institutions in five cities: UF (115 degrees a year), FIU (79), Florida State (36), USF (29), Florida Gulf Coast (21) and Florida A&M (4). Florida State and Florida A&M share the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, one joint college in Tallahassee, which is why their records in this prefix are identical down to the title.
⚠⚠ UCF and FAU award biomedical engineering at master’s and doctoral level and no bachelor’s at all, and UNF and Florida Polytechnic carry courses in the prefix without awarding the degree. St. Petersburg College is the only Florida College System institution carrying any BME course.
⚠ So a carrier count in this prefix overstates how many independent programmes exist — a course carried by “FAMU and FSU” is one programme’s course. Read anything stated here about content as a description of a small number of specific curricula rather than a Florida-wide norm. The Biomedical Engineer career path sets out what this means for choosing where to study.
This repository checks every course-looking token in a statewide prerequisite against who actually carries that course. The BME prefix returns the worst result measured anywhere in Florida: of 100 active undergraduate records, 75 name at least one course in their prerequisite field, and fifteen of those 75 — one in five — name a course that no Florida public institution carries. The same test on criminal justice returns about 2%.
⚠⚠ The likeliest cause is age, not carelessness. Biomedical engineering is Florida’s newest and fastest-growing engineering discipline; its programmes were built recently and renumbered as they matured, and the statewide record kept the numbers that were proposed, used briefly or retired along the way. The practical consequence is simply that in this prefix you should read the gate from your own institution’s catalogue every time.
⚠⚠ Check that your programme is accredited by ABET’s ENGINEERING Accreditation Commission, not the engineering technology commission — the difference is two extra years of experience toward a Professional Engineer licence, and accreditation attaches to a named programme at a named institution rather than to a course list.
Few biomedical engineers license: device manufacturing falls under the industrial exemption. ⚠ The exception is clinical engineering in hospitals and healthcare facility work. Sit the FE examination in your final year regardless — it is inexpensive as a student and expensive to recreate later. Under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes, an approved engineering curriculum needs four years of qualifying experience toward the PE.
Generated September 19, 2026 · Updated September 19, 2026