Our Story
For more than three decades, MIS has helped laboratories, researchers, and industrial professionals see their work clearly through innovative imaging technology. Founded in 1988 by Seth Grotelueschen, MIS began at a time when capturing and digitizing microscope images was a significant challenge. Seth’s vision was to simplify and accelerate the process, making high quality digital imaging accessible to everyone who needed it.
In 1991, MIS introduced the first generation of the PAX System (Picture, Archival, Transmission), a groundbreaking DOS based platform that allowed users to capture images from a microscope mounted video camera and save them directly to a PC. This early innovation led to the release of PAXIT in 1994, built for the Windows operating system and quickly adopted across many industries for its intuitive image management, measurement, and analysis capabilities.
Today, MIS remains a leader in digital microscopy with the PAXcam family of digital microscope cameras and the continuously evolving PAXIT imaging software suite. More images have been captured, cataloged, measured, and analyzed using PAXIT and PAXcam systems than with any other imaging solution in the industry.
Our customers span a wide range of disciplines, including life sciences, materials science, microelectronics, aerospace, automotive, clinical and anatomical pathology, forensic imaging, coatings analysis, weld measurement, petrography, failure analysis, and many highly specialized fields. Users across the world rely on MIS and the PAXIT platform every day in their laboratories.
A New Chapter Beginning in 2025
In 2025, MIS entered its next stage of growth. After more than thirty years of leadership, founder Seth Grotelueschen retired, followed later in the year by longtime President Chris Jahns. MIS is now led by Michael Williams, who is focused on shaping what the next thirty years of Midwest Information Systems will look like. While leadership has evolved, the core of MIS remains steady. The team has largely stayed the same, the mission is unchanged, and development continues at full speed to make our products stronger, faster, and more capable for the future.
We are proud of our long history, energized by the stability and experience of our team, and excited for the innovations ahead. Thank you for your interest in MIS and the PAXIT family of imaging solutions. We look forward to serving you for decades to come.
Our Team
The strength of MIS has always come from the people behind it. Our team includes some of the most experienced professionals in microscopy, digital imaging, and software development. With employees who bring many years of experience to the team, we provide our customers with a level of knowledge and support that is rare in the imaging world.
Even as MIS entered its next chapter in 2025 with new leadership, the core team remained steady. The same engineers, developers, support specialists, and imaging experts who helped build PAXIT and PAXcam continue to refine and improve them today. Our commitment to reliability, innovation, and customer service has not changed.
Our Clients
The Fortune 1000 companies shown here are just a few of the many that rely on PAX-it. PAX-it has been a foundational product in microscopy labs for over twenty-five years. More images have been viewed, captured, measured, analyzed, shared and printed with PAX-it than any other product. MIS has consistently provided new product innovations to the imaging industry through the years.
Today, PAX-it offers even greater value to the customers we support. Our expanded product line offers your lab capabilities found in no other product. So whether your application is industrial, such as metallurgy, microelectronics, failure analysis, gemology, law enforcement & forensics, or in the life sciences such as pathology, pharmaceutical research, education or telemedicine, PAX-it is a solution worth investing in.
In addition, PAX-it works seamlessly with your existing equipment. Thousands of PAX-it systems are installed worldwide on Huvitz, Prior, Meiji, Leica, Olympus, Zeiss and Nikon microscopes. These PAX-it systems work beautifully with cameras from manufacturers such as PAXcam, Sony, Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic and others. No matter what microscope you use, whether you have an existing camera or not, PAX-it is the glue that brings the system together and makes it work for you!
Let us show you how we can help to provide a quality foundation for your laboratory imaging activities.
