From electronic patient records to state-of-the-art medical image acquisition and analysis, computing and digital signal processing are vital techniques in modern medicine. This module is designed to introduce important topics in computing, with special emphasis given to the application of computing methods in a medical context.

This module consists of three parts: Introduction to Computing in Medicine, Introduction to MATLAB Programming, and Digital Signal and Image Processing. Students completing this course will have learned the following skills:

Introduction to Computing in Medicine:

Identify and explain the function of key components of a modern computer
 Describe the major uses of computers in a healthcare setting (e.g. PACS)
 Explain key regulatory, legal, and ethical principles of medical data security and protection
 Represent numbers using different binary number representations (e.g. floating point)
Introduction to MATLAB Programming:

Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental concepts of computer programming, including recommending appropriate data types for different forms of data
 Demonstrate a working knowledge of basic MATLAB commands
 Write a MATLAB program to perform simple analysis and visualisation of biomedical data
Digital Signal and Image Processing:

Demonstrate an understanding of the principles and application of key elements of digital signal processing, including: sampling theory, quantisation, representing a signal in both the time/space and frequency domains, convolution, the Discrete Fourier Transform, and representing and storing binary data
 Demonstrate an understanding of the principles and application of key elements of digital signal processing, including: greyscale and colour images, linear filtering, edge detection, computing gradients, interpolation, morphological filters, and an introduction to image segmentation and registration.
This module is assessed by written examination (66%) and coursework (34%) in the form of a MATLAB programming assignment.

A video description can be found at the UCL Media Central.