I'm an engineer and have worked in medical imaging for my entire career (20+ years) writing software to transport, analyze and report on images from MR, CT and X-ray systems. I originally did a PhD in computer vision and jumped into medical imaging, first as a post doc at University but I've since worked in the pharma industry and in the last 10 years at medical imaging startups.
It's a fantastic intersection of software development, pattern recognition and algorithmic development in a space that gives your work definite meaning - spending your days looking at images of people with cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, lung disease etc can help focus you on the MVP that matters. You learn some radiology as you go too; I'm pretty good at KL scoring for OA on hip and knee radiographs for example.
Development in this space can also have it's frustrations, having to combine the latest innovations with the need to meet FDA and European regulatory requirements requires a little lateral thinking sometimes. Historically there was a reluctance in the field to adopt newer technologies but in the last 5-10 years that has really started to change with a lot of imaging moving into the cloud and the regulators waking up to fact that software isn't built like a syringe!
It's a fantastic intersection of software development, pattern recognition and algorithmic development in a space that gives your work definite meaning - spending your days looking at images of people with cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, lung disease etc can help focus you on the MVP that matters. You learn some radiology as you go too; I'm pretty good at KL scoring for OA on hip and knee radiographs for example.
Development in this space can also have it's frustrations, having to combine the latest innovations with the need to meet FDA and European regulatory requirements requires a little lateral thinking sometimes. Historically there was a reluctance in the field to adopt newer technologies but in the last 5-10 years that has really started to change with a lot of imaging moving into the cloud and the regulators waking up to fact that software isn't built like a syringe!