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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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).
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.
Yrff cebfpvhggb, zber cnezvtvnab.
ROT13[1] encoded tasteless comment, apologies everyone, decode at your own risk.
[1]: https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder
For those interested the data is publicly available here:
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/getting_data.html
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.
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.
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
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.
You may want to check out the Wikipedia article. Seems like a fascinating and valuable project.
> 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.