Visible Humanity

The objective of this work is to utilize Visible Human Project type imaging on a donated human cadaver specimen and integrate that image data and resultant anatomical modeling with the medical history and life experience of the donor for the education of medical and healthcare students. The Visible Human Project (1991) was focused on producing three‐dimensional, photographic image data of optimal human anatomy. Criteria for Visible Human specimens required a young donated cadaver with no visible pathology and no surgical interventions. In 2000, a woman presented with a passionate desire to be a “visible human”. It was eventually agreed (after she examined the freezer and cryomacrotome that would be used to section her) that her wish would be granted if the conditions of her death made it possible and if she would also include her medical and life history including video documentation of her remaining life as part of her donation. Motivation for her body and life history donation was to increase compassion among healthcare workers. In contrast to Visible Human Project criteria, she was 72 years old in 2000, had 26 surgeries including four cervical screws with connecting wires to stabilize her cervical vertebrae and a prosthetic hip. She survived melanoma, breast cancer and severe depression. She was sure and determined she would die within a year. She passed away on February 16, 2015. She was imaged with CT and MR and frozen. A plastic copy of her hip prosthesis was 3D printed from the CT data. The hip region was thawed and the prosthetic hip replaced with the plastic copy to permit sectioning the pelvis. The cervical screws and wires were not removed and were successfully sectioned. The cadaver was blocked into four subunits, each less than 20” in height in a manner similar to the Visible Human. Each block was embedded in polyvinyl alcohol dyed blue. Photographic images with 7,360 × 4,912 pixels (pixel size = 63 microns) were acquired in Nikon raw image format. Data includes over 20,000 transverse cross‐sectional photographs, CT and MR images, medical records and hours of recorded video of her life from 2002 till her death. She was introduced to participants at the Fourth Visible Human Conference in Keystone Colorado, October 17–19, 2002. At that conference, some participants participated in videotaped interviews with the donor. Segmentation of the photographic images has begun and 3D models of her aged vasculature reveal their tortuosity and pathology. 4K and HD videos of the cross‐sectional photographs have been rendered and will be available for viewing. CT renderings of the whole body and the cervical vertebral fusion will also be presented. This is NOT part of the Visible Human Project and that was made clear to the donor prior to her Support or Funding Information Funding provided by Touch of Life Technologies, Inc. and the University of Colorado Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .