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Visible Human Project
The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, in which these findings link anatomy to its audiences. A male and a female cadaver were cut into thin slices, which were then photographed and digitized. The project is run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) under the direction of Michael J. Ackerman. Planning began in 1986; the data set of the male was completed in November 1994 and that of the female in November 1995. The project can be viewed today at the NLM in Bethesda, Maryland. There are currently efforts to repeat this project with higher resolution images but only with parts of the body instead of a cadaver.
The male cadaver was encased and frozen in a gelatin and water mixture in order to stabilize the specimen for cutting. The specimen was then "cut" in the axial plane at 1-millimeter intervals. Each of the resulting 1,871 "slices" was photographed in both film and digital, yielding 15 gigabytes of data. In 2000, the photos were rescanned at a higher resolution, yielding more than 65 gigabytes. The female cadaver was cut into slices at 0.33-millimeter intervals, resulting in some 40 gigabytes of data.
The term "cut" is a bit of a misnomer, yet it is used to describe the process of grinding away the top surface of a specimen at regular intervals. The term "slice", also a misnomer, refers to the revealed surface of the specimen to be photographed; the process of grinding the surface away is entirely destructive to the specimen and leaves no usable or preservable "slice" of the cadaver.
The data are supplemented by axial sections of the whole body obtained by computed tomography, axial sections of the head and neck obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and coronal sections of the rest of the body also obtained by MRI.
The scanning, slicing, and photographing took place at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where additional cutting of anatomical specimens continues to take place.
The male cadaver is from Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old Texas murderer who was executed by lethal injection on August 5, 1993. At the prompting of a prison chaplain he had agreed to donate his body for scientific research or medical use, without knowing about the Visible Human Project. Some people have voiced ethical concerns over this. One of the most notable statements came from the University of Vienna, which demanded that the images be withdrawn with reference to the point that the medical profession should have no association with executions, and that the donor's informed consent could be scrutinized.
The 59-year-old female donor remains anonymous. In the press she has been described as a Maryland housewife who died from a heart attack and whose husband requested that she be part of the project.
In 2000, Susan Potter—a cancer patient and a disability rights activist—became the third body donor to the project, spending the 15 following years until her death by pneumonia in 2015 as an outspoken advocate for medical education and a mentor of medical students at the University of Colorado. For nearly two decades, National Geographic documented the story of Susan Potter and Dr. Victor M. Spitzer, the director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who led the NIH-funded project, releasing a video documentary in 2018. By the time Potter met Spitzer in 2000, she had gone through 26 surgeries and had been diagnosed with melanoma, breast cancer and diabetes: her participation in the Visible Human Project marked a significant departure from the original goals of the project, which up until then had only focused on the dissection and imaging of healthy bodies.
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Visible Human Project
The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, in which these findings link anatomy to its audiences. A male and a female cadaver were cut into thin slices, which were then photographed and digitized. The project is run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) under the direction of Michael J. Ackerman. Planning began in 1986; the data set of the male was completed in November 1994 and that of the female in November 1995. The project can be viewed today at the NLM in Bethesda, Maryland. There are currently efforts to repeat this project with higher resolution images but only with parts of the body instead of a cadaver.
The male cadaver was encased and frozen in a gelatin and water mixture in order to stabilize the specimen for cutting. The specimen was then "cut" in the axial plane at 1-millimeter intervals. Each of the resulting 1,871 "slices" was photographed in both film and digital, yielding 15 gigabytes of data. In 2000, the photos were rescanned at a higher resolution, yielding more than 65 gigabytes. The female cadaver was cut into slices at 0.33-millimeter intervals, resulting in some 40 gigabytes of data.
The term "cut" is a bit of a misnomer, yet it is used to describe the process of grinding away the top surface of a specimen at regular intervals. The term "slice", also a misnomer, refers to the revealed surface of the specimen to be photographed; the process of grinding the surface away is entirely destructive to the specimen and leaves no usable or preservable "slice" of the cadaver.
The data are supplemented by axial sections of the whole body obtained by computed tomography, axial sections of the head and neck obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and coronal sections of the rest of the body also obtained by MRI.
The scanning, slicing, and photographing took place at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where additional cutting of anatomical specimens continues to take place.
The male cadaver is from Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old Texas murderer who was executed by lethal injection on August 5, 1993. At the prompting of a prison chaplain he had agreed to donate his body for scientific research or medical use, without knowing about the Visible Human Project. Some people have voiced ethical concerns over this. One of the most notable statements came from the University of Vienna, which demanded that the images be withdrawn with reference to the point that the medical profession should have no association with executions, and that the donor's informed consent could be scrutinized.
The 59-year-old female donor remains anonymous. In the press she has been described as a Maryland housewife who died from a heart attack and whose husband requested that she be part of the project.
In 2000, Susan Potter—a cancer patient and a disability rights activist—became the third body donor to the project, spending the 15 following years until her death by pneumonia in 2015 as an outspoken advocate for medical education and a mentor of medical students at the University of Colorado. For nearly two decades, National Geographic documented the story of Susan Potter and Dr. Victor M. Spitzer, the director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who led the NIH-funded project, releasing a video documentary in 2018. By the time Potter met Spitzer in 2000, she had gone through 26 surgeries and had been diagnosed with melanoma, breast cancer and diabetes: her participation in the Visible Human Project marked a significant departure from the original goals of the project, which up until then had only focused on the dissection and imaging of healthy bodies.