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When convicted murderer Joseph Paul Jernigan donated his body
to science, he scarcely could have imagined the phenomenal use
to which it would be put or the worldwide educational benefit
it would have to countless students, teachers, physicians, nurses
and others who would learn the intricacies of the human body
from studying his own.
In 1993, Jernigan was executed by the state of Texas at the
age of 39. His body was frozen and, at the University of Colorado,
‘sliced’ into one-millimeter increments that resulted
in over 1,800 cross-sections. Two years later, the body of a
59-year-old Maryland woman who died of heart failure was likewise
‘sliced,’ in one-third-millimeter increments. The
digitized data resulting from these two procedures show a myriad
of views of the human body and form the basis of the National
Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project. The Project
uses photographs of the resulting cross-sections, as well as
digital computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance images
(MRIs) of the two cadavers.
Perhaps no other combination of technology and medical knowledge
exemplifies so completely the new directions the study of human
anatomy is taking in the 21st century. The Visible Human Project
will supplement the bibliographic and factual database services
of the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland —
the world’s largest medical library — with a detailed
digital anatomical database of images representing a complete
normal adult male and female, which can be distributed over
high speed computer networks.
The University of Michigan is home to a team sponsored by the
Library to continue development of the Visible Human Project.
Led by Brian Athey, Ph.D., the U-M project team, in collaboration
with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, is working to put
the Visible Human Project data on the federal government’s
Next Generation Internet. This system, known as Internet2, is
projected to be 1,000 times faster than the Internet we use
today and is being developed and overseen by the University
Corporation for Advanced Internet Development in Ann Arbor.
Standard two-dimensional browsers, as well as three-dimensional
browsers such as Edgewarp 3D, will provide access to the data
for a wide range of users around the world. Video, audio, text
and graphics will be linked to interactive, three-dimensional
representations to explain and expand upon the images.
The U-M team of 20 researchers is developing and evaluating
these new virtual tools with input from users in ‘testbed’
groups from the Medical School, the School of Nursing, the School
of Education and the School of Information. A collaborative
partnership with Stanford University Medical School is also
underway.
“To a large extent, this is the future of anatomy training,”
says Athey. Athey is among those who feel cadavers could be
replaced by virtual methods of learning. “Virtual learning
is safer from a health standpoint, with no worry of contagions,
and it offers students the opportunity to perform dissections
or practice surgical procedures again and again, something a
cadaver simply can’t do.”
Currently, Visible Human Project data can be accessed only by
high-speed, high-capacity computers. Once completed in 2003,
data will be available to users of the Next Generation Internet,
primarily colleges and universities. Athey is currently negotiating
an additional contract to enhance the national collaborative
testbed and evaluation program.
Also:
Learning Anatomy in the Twenty-first
Century
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