In this talk, I discuss the potential and challenges of creating visualizations of medical image data for broad audiences. These visualizations are incorporated in stories, carefully designed to convey a narrative intent, e.g., to inform about avoidable risk factors or to use screening and vaccination programs. The story design employs metaphors from theatre, such as the Freytag’s pyramid with its tension arc. The visual story elements are designed to be comprehensible without sacrificing credibility. Personalization, e.g., a focus on a patient or a physician, is used to engage the audience. While narrative visualization has been employed since a decade for conveying abstract business and finance data, the special challenges of 3D data, were rarely addressed.

Bernhard Preim was born in 1969 in Magdeburg. He received the diploma in computer science and a Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Magdeburg. In 1999 he joined the staff of MeVis Bremen and directed the "computer-aided planning in liver surgery" group. In 2002 he received the Habilitation degree from the University of Bremen. Since 2003 he is full professor for "Visualization" at the University of Magdeburg, leading a research group focussed on medical visualization. He authored several textbooks: "Entwicklung interaktiver Systeme", "Visualization in Medicine" (with D. Bartz), "Interaktive Systeme" (with R. Dachselt) and "Visual Computing in Medicine" (with C. Botha).