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The application of computer-based procedures for research purposes in the UKE can be traced back to the Sixties. Essential impulses were triggered by a good cooperation between the working group around Bochnik with the computer center of the university, and the collaboration with the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) established in 1969, which lead to the first installation of a computer in the UKE in the same year. On the 10. January 1966, the faculty agreed to establish a facility for documentation. The first report of the facility for documentation and evaluation of the hospital dates from the same year. This facility later changed its name to Department of Medical Documentation and Statistics and was lead by Sönke Lensch, who subsequently became the director of the computing center.
In 1978, the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science (IMDM) was established with the appointment of PD Dr. rer. nat. Karl Heinz Höhne for the department of Informatics in Medicine, and PD Dr. med. vet. Jürgen Berger for the department of Mathematics in Medicine. On the 20. March 1981, it was officially recognized as a scientific facility according to §16 of the Hamburg University Law. The computer center of the hospital became the third department of the institute.
The main focus of research of the department lead by Prof. Höhne was in medical image processing. Early experiments related to the quantitative evaluation of images from nuclear medicine, and the analysis of image sequences from angiography. With the advent of tomographic imaging devices, work concentrated on 3D modeling, with applications in surgical planning and simulation. Combination of spatial models with a formal description finally lead to a new representation of medical knowledge, which was used for building a new kind of atlases of anatomy, function, and radiological appearance of the human body. Methods and applications developed became well-known under the name VOXEL-MAN. An overview of the scientific work of this time was published as a guest editorial for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging in 2002.
In early 2003, the Department of Informatics in Medicine was transformed into the independent Institute of Medical Informatics within the newly established Center of Experimental Medicine. Prof. Höhne retired on the 30. September 2003. As his successor, PD Dr. rer. nat. Heinz Handels was appointed.
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