Physics with Medical Physics

Join a top 10 university for physics in the UK (The Guardian Best UK Universities 2024) in the vibrant, welcoming capital city of Wales.

Applying physics to the treatment and diagnosis of medical conditions is a rapidly expanding and exciting field, vitally important to the detection and treatment of many medical conditions and diseases.

This often results in developments in technology, which includes both instruments and techniques, e.g. the stethoscope, the sphygmomanometer for measuring blood pressure, magnetic resonance imagers (MRIs) and linear accelerators for treating cancer.

The contribution to modern medicine by physics is considerable and is just as important as that of biology and chemistry. Medical physics techniques vary widely and utilise a range of physical phenomena including electricity, magnetism, ultrasound, radioactivity and the whole spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. In all these applications, precise and accurate measurement is of great importance and developments have, in large part, been enabled by the startling growth in computing power over the past few decades.

Our Physics with Medical Physics degree is provided in conjunction with the Cardiff & Vale and Velindre NHS Trusts, with specialised modules taught by professional medical physicists from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine. It is designed to give you a thorough grounding in physics, and a broad introduction to the major topics in medical physics including optics, radiation in medical diagnosis and medical ultrasound.

You will gain core skills in physics, mathematics and computing while studying more specialised medical physics topics such as:
- digital medical imaging;

- medical ultrasound;

- radiation in medical diagnosis;

- how the human body works.

In your final year, you will undertake an extended project which will usually be hospital-based or at Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), and there are a range of areas in which you can choose to specialise.

The course provides an excellent basis for a range of careers. Many of our graduates are successful in obtaining places on the UK-wide training scheme for clinical medical physicists run by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, while others undertake medical physics research or find employment with international medical equipment companies.