Chimaera ImViA Goes Live: From Prototype to a Growing Research Platform
Digital innovations in surgery only create real value once they become part of everyday clinical workflows.
That is exactly the milestone we are celebrating now: Chimaera ImViA is live at two leading research institutions in Germany.
Following its first successful installation at University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, the platform is now also in use at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.
With this expansion, Chimaera ImViA has evolved from being one component of an ambitious development project into a growing ecosystem for AI-supported surgical annotation.
What Is Chimaera ImViA?
Chimaera ImViA ‒ our Web Application Ecosystem for Image and Video Annotation, Analysis & AI ‒ brings structure, scalability, and intelligence to complex surgical video data. The browser-based platform enables surgical teams to annotate, analyze, and manage recordings efficiently, securely, and collaboratively.
Core capabilities include:
• Structured annotation of surgical phases, instruments, and events
• Quality-assured multi-user workflows
• Cross-site collaboration within research networks
• AI-powered video object segmentation
• Integration of custom AI models via the AI Model Zoo
• Secure, GDPR-compliant data management
In short: Chimaera ImViA transforms surgical videos into high-quality, actionable data.
Why These “Go Live” Moments Matter
Software launches are always exciting – but in medical AI, one question matters most: How well does the solution perform in real clinical environments?
Each new installation allows researchers, physicians, and engineers to test workflows under real-world conditions, provide valuable feedback, and continuously improve the system for practical use.
At University Hospital Dresden and now at DKFZ Heidelberg, the first users are establishing productive workflows and validating them in practice. At the same time, they are strengthening their expertise in intelligent systems, robotics, and translational surgery.
Every new site contributes fresh perspectives, new datasets, and new ideas – accelerating progress toward scalable, trustworthy AI solutions in surgery.
Chimaera ImViA – Built for Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Surgical innovation does not happen in isolation.
It thrives through close collaboration between surgery, research, and technology.
From the very beginning, Chimaera ImViA was designed for distributed, interdisciplinary teams within the Surgical AI Hub Germany (SAIHG).
In this initiative, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), project partners work together to advance data-driven quality improvement in surgery.
With multiple active sites, ImViA now demonstrates what shared research infrastructure can look like in practice: one platform, many perspectives.
The Next Chapter of Surgical AI
The future of surgical AI depends on trustworthy systems, clinically relevant data, and close collaboration between medicine and technology.
Chimaera ImViA is growing step by step into exactly that kind of platform ‒ and this is only the beginning.
We would like to thank the Chimaera ImViA pioneers: Prof. Dr. med. Martin Wagner, Dr. med. Johanna Brandenburg, Marlene Karl and their team from Surgical AI Hub Germany, as well as Prof. Dr. Kowalewski, Dr. Luisa Renner, and the KKE E140 research group “Intelligent Systems and Robotics in Urology” (ISRU).
