Roots of MEVIS

The current Fraunhofer MEVIS institute was founded on the initiative of mathematician Prof. Dr. Heinz-Otto Peitgen in August 1995 as MeVis – Center for Medical Diagnostic Systems and Visualization, a non-profit limited liability company (gGmbH) at the University of Bremen. To expand the institute, MeVis received yearly funding from the State of Bremen. Prof. Peitgen was appointed Executive Director of MeVis, and an international Scientific Advisory Board oversaw research. In 2006, the institute was renamed MeVis Research GmbH, Center for Medical Image Computing.

Since 1997, MeVis Research has produced several legally and financially independent spin-offs that were consolidated in 2007 into MeVis Medical Solutions AG, a publicly traded company that employs about 140 people today. Aside from a few temporary declines in staff due to changes in personnel caused by the founding of a new company, the number of employee steadily increased between the founding in August 1995 and integration into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in January 2009. During this time, the number of employees has increased from 10 to 51 full-time positions.

Within a period of 13 years, MeVis evolved from a small group of visionary people into an internationally recognized R&D center for medical image computing. Embedded in a worldwide network of clinical and academic partners, MeVis has taken a pioneering role in developing real-world software solutions for image-supported early detection, diagnosis, and therapy. From the outset, the conceptual orientation of the institute was guided by a strong engagement with medical needs and clinical processes. Two outstanding examples for groundbreaking work with clinical impact are MeVis‘ achievements in breast cancer screening and liver surgery planning. A detailed description of the early phase of MeVis can be found in the German report MeVis – The First Ten Years.

On January 1, 2009, MeVis Research was incorporated into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and renamed Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing MEVIS (short: Fraunhofer MEVIS). Prof. Dr. Heinz-Otto Peitgen was appointed Institute Director. The Advisory Board (Kuratorium) of Fraunhofer MEVIS convened on June 4, 2009, headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Erich R. Reinhardt, then the head of medical technology on the board of Siemens AG. Prof. Dr. Gábor Székely took over the chairmanship in June 2014. Prof. Dr. Hans Maier has been elected chairman of the Fraunhofer MEVIS Advisory Board since June 2018. After initial membership in the Fraunhofer Group for Information and Communication Technology (Fraunhofer-Verbund IUK), Fraunhofer MEVIS has been one of the founding members of the Fraunhofer Group for Health (Fraunhofer-Verbund Gesundheit) since 2021.

The Fraunhofer MEVIS Project Group for Image Registration was established under the direction of mathematician Prof. Dr. Bernd Fischer at the University of Lübeck in April 2010. The internationally renowned project group addresses medical image registration, a key skill in medical image computing, in close cooperation with the Institute of Mathematics and Image Computing (MIC) at the University of Lübeck. In July 2013, Prof. Dr. Bernd Fischer passed away following a short, severe illness. The director of the MIC, Prof. Dr. Jan Modersitzki, was appointed director of the project group in October 2014.

During the transitional phase of five years, the parent institute in Bremen and the project group in Lübeck have received funding from the States of Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein and have been co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). In April 2013 and 2014 respectively, both institutions were included in the regular basic funding of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Since July 2015, the former project group in Lübeck has been part of the parent institute in Bremen. In 2011, the long-standing cooperation with the Diagnostic Image Analysis Group (DIAG) at Radboud University Nijmegen was intensified and a strategic cooperation with RWTH Aachen University was concluded in 2018. In April 2017, Fraunhofer MEVIS opened a new site in Berlin and in July 2024 in Hamburg.

In October 2012, MEVIS founder Prof. Peitgen retired after heading the institute for 17 years and his former deputy Prof. Dr. Horst K. Hahn succeeded as Interim Institute Director. From May 2014, the institute was jointly headed by Prof. Hahn and Prof. Ron Kikinis, MD. As of March 2020, Prof. Kikinis was appointed by Harvard Medical School as “B. Leonard Holman Endowed Professor of Radiology”. Since then, Prof. Hahn has been the sole managing director of the institute, supported by two deputies.

On January 1, 2019, exactly ten years after joining the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing MEVIS was renamed the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS. The new name reflects the Institute’s substantially expanded research spectrum and the ambition to drive the transformation of tomorrow's digital, integrated precision medicine through systematic computer support.

In September 2018, construction began on a dedicated institute building for Fraunhofer MEVIS, which was funded in equal parts by the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Bremen and the European Commission (ERDF). The building on the campus of the University of Bremen, called the “Workshop of Digital Medicine”, was occupied in May 2021.