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Virtual human – a living cadaver – pushes boundaries of anatomical science(2018) (news.cuanschutz.edu)
thih9 3 days ago [-]
Wikipedia has more details about the project and the donors, and high quality photos (warning, human cadaver cryosections): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project
albumen 3 days ago [-]
What the OP article notes, that Wikipedia doesn't, is that Susan Potter was imaged in layers just 63 microns thick, vs 300 for the earlier female donor, and 1000 microns for the male.
thih9 3 days ago [-]
The information is there, although you need to follow a link:

> Potter's body was (…) sliced into 27,000 slices in 63-μm increments, individually scanned during a period of 60 working days. Because the technology used in the Visible Human project significantly improved since its launch in 1993, much more detail will be available in Potter's scans: images from the two previous donors were based on 1,000 μm sections for the male subject and 300 μm for the female subject.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Potter

Then again, I only meant that Wikipedia has some extra data - not that it has everything from the article (it doesn’t).

polishdude20 3 days ago [-]
What's eerie to think about is that they don't actually make "slices" in a physical sense. They just grind away a bit, take a photo, grind away a bit, take another photo. At the end the body is just dust.
thih9 2 days ago [-]
Yrff cebfpvhggb, zber cnezvtvnab.

ROT13[1] encoded tasteless comment, apologies everyone, decode at your own risk.

[1]: https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder

bobajeff 3 days ago [-]
For those interested the data is publicly available here:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/getting_data.html

beardedmoose 3 days ago [-]
Thank you for this! Too bad there isn't an already prepared virtual project where you can view this in 3D. Might be a fun coding project to load the slices into a UI for easier viewing.
drhike 3 days ago [-]
Oh wow! Years ago, this program was preloaded on our laptops in medical school. I remember the donor was incarcerated and decided to donate his body. It was really quite helpful for visualizing anatomy in cross section vs what we saw in anatomy lab. It was a standalone folder app and I have regretted not backing it up elsewhere.
tetris11 3 days ago [-]
People are working on Virtual Twin[0] mumbo jumbo along these lines. Why bother with microscopic effects of ion channels and cell proliferation when you can simulate tissue dynamics with continuous gradients?

(Because the trees are often more informative than the forest itself...)

0: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/what-is-a-digital-twin

5 days ago [-]
kobalsky 3 days ago [-]
This feels like a nothingburger. There isn't even a hint of how the virtual human works or a demo or anything. Just lots of back patting about the clever name.
s1artibartfast 3 days ago [-]
You may want to check out the Wikipedia article. Seems like a fascinating and valuable project.
st_goliath 3 days ago [-]
> This feels like a nothingburger. There isn't even a hint of [...] a demo or anything.

The visible human project has been around for quite some time and has, in fact, accomplished their initial project goals. And they do have a demo application, complete with a "guided tour", interview snippets and everything, all on a single CD-ROM! I remember playing around with it at the local library in December 2003.

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