New imaging processes are gaining importance for doctors: ultrasound, computer tomography, and nuclear magnetic resonance tomography already provide detailed views of the interior of the human body. However, progress continues. These devices facilitate increasingly comprehensive and complex measurements. With the appropriate software, the data can be combined and analyzed. The obtained information facilitates medical decisions and also helps patients – this is precisely the interest shared by both the new directors.

Horst Karl Hahn, 41, knows the needs and challenges of clinical practice. With an academic background in physics and information science, he has been developing algorithms for fifteen years that enable medical imaging data to be converted into solutions tailored for diagnostics and therapy. The methods developed under his leadership are already being employed in cancer diagnostics, neurology, surgical intervention planning, and radiation therapy. He is responsible for several national and European research consortia and has been professor of medical imaging at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany since 2011. He took over as acting director of MEVIS in October 2012.

Ron Kikinis, 58, is a pioneer of computer-assisted medicine. He founded the Surgical Planning laboratory (SPL) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and has been professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School since 2004. “SPL was one of the first laboratories to embed interdisciplinary basic research in a clinical environment,” explains Kikinis. The physician and Ph.D. is also Principal Investigator for the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing, the leading network of research teams for this field in the United States. On January 1, 2014, Professor Kikinis was appointed to the Chair for Medical Image Computing in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Bremen. He will be working in both Boston and Bremen to unite researchers in the field of computer-assisted medicine on both sides of the Atlantic.