Welcome to the Visualization Group at the University of Magdeburg
The group was established in March 2003 and is headed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Preim.
The Visualization group plays an active role in the Bachelor and Master programs of Computational Visualistics, Visual Computing, Medizintechnik, Medical Systems Engineering and Data and Knowledge Engineering.
We regularly offer lectures on Visualization, Visual Analytics, Human-Computer Interaction, Medical Visualization, Computer-Supported Diagnosis and Treatment and Visual Analytics in Healthcare. Our research is focussed on visualization and interaction techniques for medical education, diagnosis and therapy planning, rehabilitation and epidemiology.
News
- New Member in our VIS Group
Welcome to Luisa Flaig. Luisa comes from Hochschule Neubrandenburg. She has won numerous awards at XR hackathons and brings a unique mix of pedagogical expertise and technical skills in frontend development, graphic design, web technologies, and mixed reality. She will support teaching activities and will pursue her PhD in the field of narrative medical visualization.
- PhD thesis defended
Sarah Mittenentzwei successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Disease Stories: Visual and Narrative Strategies for Scientific Disease Communication”. The thesis was reviewed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Preim (OvGU Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Renata Raidou (TU Wien), and Prof. Dr. Petra Isenberg (Uni Paris-Saclay). Sarah worked primarily in the field of narrative medical visualization. She collaborated with clinicians from a range of disciplines, most notably with Prof. Dr. med. Stefanie Schreiber (DZNE & Department of Neurology, University Hospital Magdeburg). Her work advanced research in data-driven health communication through visualization-based approaches, emphasizing narrative methods that improve the understanding and dissemination of medical data and concepts for lay audiences.
- PhD Thesis defended
Iam Spitz successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Computational support for morphology-driven analysis of neurovascular pathologies”. The thesis was reviewed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Preim (OvGU Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Sylvia Saalfeld (Uni Kiel), and Prof. Dr. Dorit Merhof (Uni Regensburg). Iam worked primarily in the area of medical image processing for neurovascular diseases, especially intracranial aneurysms. They cooperated intensely with Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Daniel Behme at University Hospital Magdeburg and PD Dr. Naomi Larsen at University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel. Iam’s work supported aneurysm research and treatment through rupture risk assessment and 3D mesh processing, focussing on morphological analysis.
- VisGroup@IEEE VIS
VisGroup will be giving three presentations at this year’s IEEE VIS 2025, which takes place from 2nd to 7th November in Vienna, Austria.
The VIS 2025 program can be found here.
Aaron Schroeder will present his work on: ‘Understanding Aortic Dissection Hemodynamics: Evaluating Adapted Smoke Surfaces Against Streakline-Based Techniques‘.
Anna Kleinau presents the preliminary results of her doctoral research at the VIS Doctoral Colloquium. She also participates in this year’s VAHC Workshop with her paper on the visualization of health data for children with heart valve diseases.
- New Member in the VIS Group
Welcome to Roshan Muralidharan. Roshan comes from Bauhaus University Weimar and has considerable experience in Virtual Reality. He works in the ESF+ PhD program “Micro- / Nano-technology for Future” on Virtual Reality for Semiconductor Manufacturing and related Education Systems.
- GI VR Workshop Highlights
We had a great time at the GI VR workshop! Tim Härtel shared his paper “Gamified VR-Training for Human Middle and Inner Ear Anatomical Structures”, and Janine Zöllner presented her poster “Learning Physics through Elastic Storytelling in Virtual Reality: A Museum-Like Educational Experience.”
The GI VR/AR group fosters research, knowledge exchange, and collaboration in virtual and augmented reality through its long-standing annual workshop that unites academia and industry.
This year’s workshop was a fun and inspiring exchange with colleagues from the VR community, sparking lots of new ideas and fresh perspectives.
- Eurographics Dirk Bartz Price
Our contribution „Visual Disease Stories: Empowering Health Literacy and Promotion“ with Sarah Mittenentzwei as first author received the first price in the bi-annual competition for the Dirk Bartz Price of the Eurographics. The price was awarded on the EuroVis, June 2025. Further contributors are Sophie Mlitzke, Beatrice Budich, Anna Kleinau, Monique Meuschke and Bernhard Preim. The price acknowledges several contributions on narrative medical visualization informing in an engaging manner about diseases, their prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment.
- Interesting guests at the Vis group (June 20 to 26)
We had Torsten Möller, University of Vienna as a guest in our group. He gave an interesting and well-received talk on “Vis4All: Visual encodings for a broad audience”. Laura Garrison, Associate professor at the University of Bergen, joins us for a research stay to discuss further projects on narrative medical visualization.
- Rudolf-Kruse Prize Winner
Aaron Schroeder received the Rudolf-Kruse prize for his paper “Advanced visualization of aortic dissection anatomy and hemodynamics” that appeared in the journal “Computers & Graphics”. The paper is the result of a cooperation with the radiology department at Stanford University.
- New members of the Vis Group
Welcome to Sophie Mlitzke and Aaron Schroeder. Sophie brings considerable experience in narrative visualization and Aaron is a specialist in medical flow visualization.
