| Visible Human Project and the Visible Human Server |
| Friday, 27 November 2009 01:48 | ||||||||||
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Hello All... it has been a little while since I've put anything on the blog. Life has been really (and I do mean REALLY) busy at home, as we are taking care of some large house projects and preparing for our second child (who is due to arrive soon - Early Jan. 2010). Anyhow, I'm back to work on this blog and the more formal web site and hope to continue to share some interesting insight and thoughts. So for today (or rather this morning), I'm going to kick off this post with a doosey. If you haven't heard of the Visible Human Project, you might just have been hiding under a rock. For those of you who haven't heard, the visible human project is a vast undertaking of digitizing the human body. The project started with one male human body, which was frozen in a block of ice, and then microtomed (sliced) one small layer at a time. After each slice, the exposed surface of the body was photographed. The data from these slices were fed into a computer which then (along with human help) figured out what was what, and created data sets to represent each item in the body. This compiled data was then made available to use for research and educational purposes. And that was that. Boring and morose right? Not at all... read on. This data was then fed into computers and applications have been built around this data to allow us to view the body in many different ways. Each view (or slice) gives you the view of what it would be like to extract a full cross cut slice out of the body. What does a iit look like in the elbow? You can find out. But what if you want to change the perspective of that slice through the elbow, and say... view it at a slant or angle. You can do that too. In addition you can use 3D modeling to view how parts of the body relate to each other in the three dimensions of space. For anyone who is interested in human anatomy, this is an amazing thing. Simply amazing. And what is even more amazing is that the computer science department at EPFL Peripheral Systems Labs have made a Java applet that lets you do all of this for free (slice extraction and 3D modeling). Again... simply amazing. So re-ignite that child-like desire to learn about that body you inhabit and check it out at: The visible human project continues with a female body as well, which has been microtomed in finer increments allowing for more precise data and better images and modeling. One can only think that as technology gets better that the project will continue and reap more and more knowledge for those interested. If you went to either Body Worlds or The Body's Exhibit, this is a must-see. Cheers, Mark Pearlscott
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