Title: The Body in Medical Imaging between Reality and Construction

Britta Schinzel

Computer Science and Society at the Department of Mathematics and Physics

University of Freiburg

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 2:30 p.m., 347 Avery Hall

Abstract: Medical Imaging has provided insight into the living body that were not possible beforehand. With these methods a revolution in medical diagnosis and biomedical research has begun. But as always the benefits also oppose problematic side effects and epistemic developments, which need critical reflection and correctives.
Problems arise from the epistemic property of these visualization technologies which are highly constructed, more so than classical photography or drawings. These images are constructed differently according to specific goals of visualisation. They are highly complicated combinations of technology and contingently chosen algorithms. In addition, image construction follows properties of the human visual and cognitive system to allow for the discrimination of the desired categories. It is no wonder that the visualizations referring to the body also show effects which have no physiological correlation within the body.
But there are deeper epistemological problems, such as the normative effects of such images and their cartographic derivations within atlases. These result in new definitions of the normed healthy body, sickness or pathologies, maleness and femaleness and in determinism as opposed to plasticity, e.g. of the brain.

Biography: Britta Schinzel studied Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy, Music in Innsbruck and Vienna, phil. Dr. in Mathematics, worked in Computer-Industry, habilitation in TH Darmstadt and later professor for Theoretical Computer Science at RWTH Aachen, Full Professor for Computer Science and Society at the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Freiburg, since 2000 also at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Freiburg.

More material:

• Related information: Schinzel, B.: Computer Science between Symbolic Representation and Open Construction; in Lenski, W. (ed): Logic versus Approximation: Essays Dedicated to Michael M. Richter on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 3075 / 2004 ISBN: 3-540-22562-5
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Contact information: Ms. LaRita Lang - Tel: (402) 472-3826 E-mail : llang1@unl.edu