Medical image analysis and computer-aided diagnostic systems, in conjunction with new imaging and artificial intelligence techniques, have revolutionised healthcare in recent years. For these reasons, medical imaging was ranked by the renowned New England Journal of Medicine as one of the 10 most important medical milestones of the past millennium.

The technology-oriented development of computer-aided systems and medical image analysis applications comes from various research areas of computer science, such as: artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision, image processing, and the development of sensors and techniques of acquisition. The lack of graduates with expertise in the needs of this multidisciplinary field is also reflected in the industrial context. It should be noted that medical technology plays a very important role in the European economy, with more than 575,000 people working in this field. Moreover, the importance of this industry has been more evident in recent years, with a significant increase in the number of employees and the number of companies (more than 25,000 in the EU) compared to other areas, such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

After completing the master's degree, MIC students not only have career opportunities in the field of medical imaging, but also in fields related to computer vision and artificial intelligence. These career opportunities will be clearly related to jobs in research and/ or academic fields such as PhD development in universities or in companies, as well as jobs as qualified engineers in hospital environments or in technology companies as managers/ in posts responsible for research and development. MIC students will be ready to carry out the following tasks:

• Management of projects related to image processing and analysis and artificial intelligence in different fields: medical technology companies, R&D departments in the field of biomedical engineering, as well as research and teaching in academia.

• Analysis and programming tasks in computer applications related to computer vision systems and artificial intelligence, including the analysis, design and implementation stages.

• Research and development tasks in public or private centres, particularly in the development of doctoral or research technician tasks.

• Information management and exploitation tasks: applying knowledge in areas such as artificial intelligence, statistics and programming to extract useful knowledge from data sets or images. A clear example is computer-aided disease diagnosis.

• Teaching and technology transfer: teaching tasks or management and implementation of the transfer of new methods and knowledge to companies for their exploitation as well as the creation of spin-off companies.

The future prospects for the MIC master's degree students are very good. Master's graduates in subjects related to medical imaging and computer vision in particular, as well as artificial intelligence in general, are in great demand in society and industry where the need to incorporate such knowledge to improve the quality and productivity of companies is increasingly evident. The international aspect of the MIC programme adds important additional value to the graduates’ human capital in terms of language proficiency (English), open-mindedness, mobility and the ability to work with multidisciplinary and international groups.