into the body
i’ve just been playing with google’s new body browser.
head over to http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/ to have a play yourself. you need a recent browser that supports WebGL and the first page will let you know of some options. i downloaded the Chrome beta as i figured it’d be optimised to work with another google product.
after a relatively short loading time you’re presented with a female body in anatomical position. you then have the ability to rotate in 3D and zoom in or out - the interface is similar to Google Earth and plenty of other 3D apps. you can then use a slider to remove the layers - from skin down through muscle, organs and bones, all the way to nerves. in fact, it was a nice little touch to have the nerve roots on the spinal cord be made up of individual nerve bunches.
you can also select to run each of the major groups in differing opacities - so you can highlight just the bones and vessels for instance.
while browsing the body you can also select any object to bring up a label of the name of that part. there is plenty of detail for a medical student level - for gross anatomy at least. i was a bit disappointed that i couldn’t get a good inferior view of the brainstem and base of the brain or of the circle of willis (although to be fair at least you could get labels for the component parts - see the image).
the other really excellent feature is the search bar. you can simply type in any part of the body and it will create a list (if your spelling is not quite right) and zoom you to the location. sadly it didn’t recognise the Great Vein of Galen, or the clitoris - in fact no parts of the external genitalia are included. not even the vulva gets a mention. perhaps they’re hoping to discourage the more prurient users… (as an aside, this wouldn’t be the first time that female genital anatomy got revised)
but really, all in all the bodybrowser is quite remarkable - and being in beta means there’s still more to come.
at this stage it’s an excellent resource for patient education and for students to have another tool for reinforcing their gross anatomy.
