Medical imaging is at the heart of modern diagnostic practice. Behind every clinical image — a chest radiograph, a CT angiogram, an MRI brain study, an obstetric ultrasound, a PET oncology scan — sits a specific physical principle of image formation, a specific image-quality trade-off, and a specific regulatory and quality-assurance context. For engineers, medical physicists, imaging technologists, regulatory professionals, and digital-health product managers entering the field, the first task is to develop a common vocabulary for the modalities and a working intuition for how image quality is characterized.

This 16-hour Professional Certificate Course is the entry point of the Aleph Medical Imaging Systems course track. It introduces the physics and engineering of the principal imaging modalities (X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, PET), the image-quality metrics that engineers and physicists use to evaluate them (signal-to-noise ratio, modulation transfer function, contrast and spatial resolution), and the ALARA discipline that governs the use of ionizing-radiation modalities. The course also orients participants to the regulatory framework — FDA 21 CFR Subchapter J for radiation-emitting products and the IEC 60601-2-XX collateral-standard family for imaging equipment — at the level needed to know what applies and where to look.

The course prepares participants for the Advanced level (`BME-620-A`), where the same modalities are exercised at applied depth — modality-specific engineering, applied quality-assurance protocols referenced to AAPM Task Group reports, IEC 60601-2 application, and AI in image reconstruction under the FDA AI/ML framework. Together the Introductory and Advanced levels form a 48-hour course track.

The Introductory course establishes the cross-modal vocabulary the medical-imaging industry expects of someone entering an engineering, physics, regulatory, or product role. Employers in this space include imaging-OEM manufacturers (Siemens Healthineers, GE HealthCare, Philips, Canon Medical, and others), clinical-imaging operations (hospital radiology departments and outpatient imaging centers), and digital-health and AI-imaging startups whose products build on existing imaging systems. The Introductory level is the right starting point for professionals whose work touches imaging but who do not yet have a working command of the modalities and the regulatory landscape.

Participants who meet the course completion requirements receive a Certificate of Completion issued by Aleph University.