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 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.

  • PhD Thesis defended

    Benedikt Mayer successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “From Exploratory to Explanatory Interactive Visualization of Spatio-Temporal Conflict Data”. The thesis was reviewed by Prof. Dr. Holger Theisel (OvGU Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Christian Tominski (Uni Rostock), and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Aigner (FH St. Pölten). Benedikt worked primarily in the area of peace and conflict research, cooperating intensely with Prof. K. Donnay, Univ. of Zuerich. Benedikt considered the whole range between “exploration” and “explanation” of conflict data.

  • PhD Thesis defended

    Mareen Allgaier successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Applying Surgeon-centric Design to Advanced VR-based Medical Training”. The thesis was reviewed by Prof. Dr. Christian Hansen (OvGU Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Torsten Kuhlen (RWTH Aachen), and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wolbers (DZNE Magdeburg). In an entertaining ceremony, the candidate was celebrated at the Otto-von-Guericke monument.

  • VisGroup@VCBM

    VisGroup will be giving four presentations at this year’s VCBM 2024, which takes place on 19th and 20th September in Magdeburg.

    The VCBM 2024 program can be found here.

    Aaron Schroeder will present his work on: ‘Advanced Visualisation of Aortic Dissection Anatomy and Hemodynamics‘.



    Sarah Mittenentzwei will be presenting her work on: ‘Why, What, and How to Communicate Health Information Visually: Reflections on the Design Process of Narrative Medical Visualisation’ and ‘Leaving the Lab Setting: What We Can Learn About the Perception of Narrative Medical Visualisations from YouTube Comments’.

    Kai Ostendorf will talk about his work on the ‘Synthetic Surface Mesh Generation of Aortic Dissections using Statistical Shape Modeling’.

  • Master Thesis defended

    Aaron Schroeder defended his Master thesis on “Smoke-Like Visualization of Aortic Dissection Hemodynamics” with the best possible grade. Aaron adapted sophisticated flow visualization methods to display simulated flow in aortic dissections, clearly distinguishing flow in the true and false lumen as well as antegrade and retrograde flow. This work was accomplished in close cooperation with Dr. Gabriel Mistelbauer and his team from Stanford University.

  • EuroVis Early Career Award 2024

    Monique Meuschke was awarded with the EuroVis Early Career Award to recognize her significant contributions to medical flow visualization and narrative visualization. This prestigious award is given to only one young scientist (up to seven years after getting the PhD).

  • Habilitation Thesis defended

    Gabriel Mistelbauer, Stanford University, defended his Habilitation on “Visual Analysis of Selected Anatomies” successfully. In his thesis and talk, he summarized his research activities on map-based visualizations and 3D renderings for diagnosing aortic dissections, diseases of the placenta, and teeth. Gabriel was a member of the VisGroup from 2016 to 2022 and still actively cooperates with our group.

  • New Member in the VIS Group

    Welcome to Anna Kleinau, our new staff member. Anna brings considerable experience in narrative visualization and visual analytics also based on an employment at our former staff member, Prof. Steffen Oeltze-Jafra from Medical School Hannover. Anna aims to bridge visual analytics and narrative visualization.

  • Survey Article on Metaphors in MedVis Completed

    Our article “A Survey of Medical Visualization through the Lens of Metaphors” was accepted at IEEE TVCG. The image shows a visual representation of the surgical control tower, a metaphor developed at ICCAS in Leipzig.

  • New Journal Paper Accepted

    We are happy to announce that our paper on visual storytelling techniques in spatio-temporal data stories was recently accepted at the Computer Graphics Forum. Adapting existing design spaces, we analyzed 130 online stories to distill the most common techniques used in them:
    B. Mayer, N. Steinhauer, B. Preim, M. Meuschke: A Characterization of Interactive Visual Data Stories With a Spatio-Temporal Context