The Visible Human Project

Abstract

The Visible Human Project data sets are designed to serve as a common reference point for the study of human anatomy, as a set of common public-domain data for testing medical imaging algorithms, and as a testbed and model for the construction of image libraries that can be accessed through networks. The data sets are being applied to a wide range of educational, diagnostic, treatment planning, virtual reality, artistic, mathematical, and industrial uses by more than 800 licensees in 27 countries. But key issues remain in the development of methods to link such image data to text-based data. Standards do not currently exist for such linkages. Basic research is needed in the description and representation of image-based structures and in the connection of image-based structural-anatomical data to text-based functional-physiological data. This is the larger, long-term goal of the Visible Human Project: to link the print library of functional-physiological knowledge with the image library of structural-anatomical knowledge transparently into one unified resource of health information.