Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, offers a bachelor of fine arts in medical illustration that requires courses including professional electives and art history. Students are responsible for their own art supplies. The medical illustrator option teaches students to create visual communications for degrees in the medical field. Those in the program receive instruction in biology and anatomy as well as art. Classes include digital illustration, human biology, head, hands, and facial expressions, and zoological and botanical illustration.
Iowa State University in Ames offers a major in biological and pre-medical illustration (BPMI). Students take classes in both science and art, and the program prepares students for graduate study in medical illustration. ISU has one of the longest-running programs of its kind. Students can join the four-year program in their second year after submitting a portfolio, and their progress is reviewed every semester. The components of the program include basic and advanced general education and science and art courses.
The Medical School of Georgia offers a master of science in medical illustration, one of only four such programs in the nation. The first program to be given accreditation in the late 1960s, it's 21 months long and teaches students to create and communicate through illustration the concepts that can't be easily observed. Students focus on anatomical and surgical illustration, taking formal courses, lectures, and seminars and gaining hands-on experience.
The University of Illinois in Chicago is a national leader in medical illustration, with a program that offers a masters in science in biomedical visualization, the only one with a Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory. There are three areas of concentration: the computer visualization focus teaches students to use advanced technology to create 3D data and models; medical illustration majors create digital imagery for the surgical, advertising and pharmaceutical fields; and the prosthetics/3D model design focus teaches students to design prostheses and surgical implants.