ANN ARBOR—Anatomy students may soon get hands-on experience with the “Visible Human.”

The School of Nursing at the University of Michigan—along with the Medical School, the Office of the University Chief Information Officer, the College of Engineering, the School of Information, the School of Education, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center—is currently in the second year of a three-year, $6.7 million contract with the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) to assist in the development of virtual anatomical educational tools for health science students and professionals using the “Visible Human.” The U-M School of Nursing is the only nursing school currently participating in any of the NIH/NLM funded “Visible Human” projects.

The “Visible Human” project began more than 10 years ago. It’s a computer-based program creating a detailed digital anatomical database of the human body. CAT scans and MRI’s were performed on cadavers to help provide some of the digital images. Researchers also sectioned cadavers in millimeter intervals to provide the most detailed information possible. The results were incorporated into a 3-D computer-generated rendering of a male and female body. With the “Visible Human,” anatomy students will be able to “look inside” the human body to see how bones, organs and muscles interact and locate body parts.

The U-M’s project consists of three teams helping develop virtual anatomical tools for the education of health science students and professionals using the “Visible Human.” Sponsored by the NIH/NLM, the University’s project has set up a user interface team, software team and network team. Each group provides input and support to move the “Visible Human” toward use in anatomy classes as a teaching tool and to help develop the delivery of the “Visible Human” over the Next Generation Internet (NGI). NGI delivery will provide the opportunity for as many as 400 students to simultaneously use the dataset by the end of 2003. Brian Athey, the project’s principal investigator, says that “using data compression technology and parallel servers this number will grow much higher in the future, enabling international impact.”

The School of Nursing is involved in the user interface team. Working with the Medical School, School of Dentistry and Division of Kinesiology, focus groups with anatomy students and faculty were conducted to find out the exact needs and expectations of using the “Visible Human.”

“We want to develop a tool for students and professionals to learn or review anatomy more efficiently and effectively,” says Deborah S. Walker, assistant professor in the School of Nursing and co-investigator on the “Visible Human” Project. The focus groups found that anatomy students were very interested in a resource that would provide 3-D representations of the human body rather than 2-D renderings offered in books. Students and faculty indicated a computer system in which they could click on a body part to get more information or see how it interacted with other parts would be beneficial. They also viewed animations of body structures and the ability to “fly through” the body as useful learning tools.

The U-M is also providing assistance with software and network development to make the “Visible Human” user friendly to students and professionals.

Researchers are currently labeling thousands of body parts within the “Visible Human” and refining software and network accessibility. They are also working on linking video, audio, text and graphics to each body part. Clicking on a particular body part will expand the image and explain its function. The U-M team will help develop and evaluate these new virtual tools with input from health science students and faculty.

Developers say because of the high level of detail, the “Visible Human” could transform research, medical education, training, diagnosis, and treatment. Recent visitors to the Nursing School from the Chinese Ministry of Health and the Chinese Nurses Association are planning to partner with the U-M team to bring the visible human to Chinese nursing schools. Several U-M nursing faculty and their Chinese counterparts are involved in this effort. Madame Ju-Yin Lin, recipient of the International Red Cross’ Nightingale Prize and Honorary President of the Chinese Nursing Association, received honorary Doctor of Science degree awarded by the U-M on Dec. 17, 2000. She visited the “Visible Human” project nursing team and endorsed the concept of bringing the technology to China.

To find out more about the “Visible Human,” sign on to http://vhp.med.umich.edu/.

Pager: (888) 761-6263

Visible HumanSchool of NursingNext Generation InternetSchool of DentistryDeborah S. WalkerChinese Nurses Associationhttp://vhp.med.umich.edu/