Virtual Human Body

Reported January 2007

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- We all know what we look like on the outside, but what about inside our bodies? Virtual reality usually flies us through imaginary worlds. Now a new one flies through the real world of the human body.

Anatomists, along with bio-chemists and medical illustration students, built the new detailed images to create a never-before-seen virtual view of the body.

"I think it's really exciting to see what we had in our head come to life," Jillian Scott, a Medical Illustration Student at the University at Buffalo in N.Y., tells Ivanhoe.

The voyage goes deep into vital organs to reveal microscopic views of cells and tissues, providing a powerful tool for understanding the human body.

Anatomist Richard Doolittle, Ph.D., of Rochester Institute of Technology in N.Y., says, "Going with something like a 3-D approach allows the student, allows the user, to see the structures from all different angles."

The images are built through a combination of illustrations, knowledge of molecular cell structures, and an understanding of the body. Then computer software creates the images. The result is a virtual library of the human body.

"Our real goal here is to provide the most reliable science we can find and the most graphically, graphically appealing way that we can," Paul Craig, Ph.D., a biochemist at Rochester Institute of Technology, tells Ivanhoe. It's also an interactive way to navigate through the body, and learn more information from virtually every angle.

So far, researchers have created images of the pancreas, liver, kidneys and heart and plan on continuing building images of the entire body and then build images of diseases in a virtual environment.

The Optical Society of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Optical Society of America
2010 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20036-1023
(202) 223-8130
info@osa.org
http://www.osa.org

Larry Hodges, Ph.D.
Director of the Virtual Human Projects
(704) 687-6131
lfhodges@uncc.edu

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