5.10.1 Perhaps the most intriguing and in some ways disturbing trend of digitisation and data collection is turned on ourselves, our bodies. Dissecting and analysing bodies is ever present since the age of the Enlightenment, when the problem of imaging the invisible became critical in the fine arts and natural sciences. (Stafford, 1993)

5.10.2 One of the most obvious examples of this is The Visible Human Project, which has its roots in a 1986 long-range planning effort of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). VHP foresaw a coming era in which NLM's bibliographic and factual database services would be complemented by libraries of digital images distributed over high-speed computer networks and by high capacity physical media. Not surprisingly, VHP saw an increasing role for electronically represented images in clinical medicine and biomedical research and encouraged the NLM to consider building and disseminating medical image libraries much the same way it acquires, indexes, and provides access to the biomedical literature. As a result of the deliberations of consultants in medical education, the long-range plan recommended that the NLM should "thoroughly and systematically investigate the technical requirements for and feasibility of instituting a biomedical images library." (vhp.nus.sg)

5.10.3 Early in 1989, under the direction of the Board of Regents, an ad hoc planning panel was convened to forge an in-depth exploration of the proper role for the NLM in the rapidly changing field of electronic imaging. After much deliberation, this panel made the following recommendation: "NLM should undertake a first project building a digital image library of volumetric data representing a complete, normal adult male and female. This Visible Human Project will include digitised photographic images for cryosectioning, digital images derived from computerised tomography and digital magnetic resonance images of cadavers." (vhp.nus.sg)

5.10.4 The initial aim of the Visible Human Project is the acquisition of transverse CT, MRI, and cryosection images of a representative male and female cadaver at an average of one millimetre intervals. The corresponding transverse sections in each of the three modalities are to be registered with one another.

5.10.5 The male data set consists of MRI, CT and anatomical images. Axial MRI images of the head, neck, and longitudinal sections of the rest of the body were obtained at 4 mm intervals. The MRI images are 256 pixel by 256 pixel resolution. Each pixel has 12 bits of grey tone resolution. The CT data consists of axial CT scans of the entire body taken at 1 mm intervals at a resolution of 512 pixels by 512 pixels where each pixel is made up of 12 bits of grey tone. The axial anatomical images are 2048 pixels by 1216 pixels where each pixel is defined by 24 bits of colour, about 7.5 megabytes. The anatomical cross sections are also at 1 mm intervals and coincide with the CT axial images. There are 1871 cross sections for each mode, CT and anatomy. The complete male data set is 15 gigabytes in size. [8] The data set from the female cadaver will have the same characteristics as the male cadaver with one exception. The axial anatomical images will be obtained at 0.33 mm intervals instead of 1.0 mm intervals. This will result in over 5,000 anatomical images. The data set is expected to be about 40 gigabytes in size. (vhp.nus.sg)

5.10.6 The larger, long-term goal of the Visible Human Project is to produce a system of knowledge structures that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats. How image data are linked to symbolic text-based data, which is comprised of names, hierarchies, principles, and theories still needs to be developed. Broader methods such as the use of hypermedia in which words can be used to find pictures and pictures can be used as an index into relevant text are under experimentation. Basic research needs to be conducted on the description and representation of structures and the connection of structural-anatomical to functional-physiological knowledge. The goal of the VHP, is to make the print library and the image library a single, unified resource for medical information.

5.10.7 Making visible the invisible in ourselves, our bodies and identities, does not stop with dissecting the human flesh into millimetre pieces, digitising and posting on the net. The human genome project goes much, much further than that. [top]