Incorporating 3D virtual anatomy into the medical curriculum

Abstract

The introduction of the Visible Human Project by Ackerman in 1995, described in the seminal paper in 1996 [9], brought a promise to anatomists that these two frozen, milled, and digitized cadavers---the Visible Male and Female---would revolutionize anatomy teaching by providing the most complete and detailed anatomical images ever. This vision could be compared to the proverbial "man on the moon" program for medical education and has proven to be much more challenging than expected. Although the ramifications of this project are not of the same scale as the shock created five centuries ago by the Padua physician Andreas Vesalius when he challenged the ancient Greek physician Galen's description of the human body, the original interest created by the availability of the Visible Human data was enormous.