Visual analysis for medicine

José Matute explains how his visualizations help in the interpretation of large quantities of medical data - for example, for investigating distributions within the population. WWU - Peter Leßmann Cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes or cardiovascular diseases are what are known as non-communicable diseases, which are responsible for the majority of deaths worldwide - in Germany, an estimated 91 percent of all deaths are the result of these diseases, and it is a rising trend. Epidemiologists have been studying the development and distribution of these epidemiological diseases, as well as the measures to combat them and what their social consequences are. Most experts know that there are very many factors responsible for the individual development of these diseases - but it is not always entirely clear which patterns or features are behind their origins and development. "Over the past few years, comprehensive health studies have been carried out to discover the factors influencing the development and treatment of non-communicable diseases,' says Dr. José Matute. "As a result, enormous quantities of information and data are available which have to be interpreted and compared. Processing these data manually would be much too great a task, so computer-assisted methods are needed to create order and enable us to understand them.' In his dissertation at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Münster, José Matute developed new methods of interactive visual data analysis in medicine.