The Explorable Virtual Human (EVH) is an authoring tool for the display of functional anatomy. It is meant to be used by anyone with a complex 3-D anatomic story to tell. Morphology measurement techniques are difficult to describe and standardize. The EVH facilitates this interaction between researchers, teachers, and students by providing sharable anatomy locally or around the world.

Interactive Anatomic Animations (IAAs), displayed in the EVH, provide a mechanism for teachers to illustrate particular anatomic features of human anatomy to a student who is free to control the display of the anatomy.

The Explorable Virtual Human program displays IAAs from the Visible Human Male, the 100 micron knee, and high resolution CTs.

The Volume Viewer program allows users to see the CT data in arbitrary oblique planes, and provides a method for saving the data in a format that can be segmented. This view shows an oblique slice through one of the CT volumes used in this study.

A user has segmented the femur from the CT data. The femur in this slice is highlighted in purple. Segmentation can be done in axial, sagittal, and coronal planes.

A polygonal model of the distal femur, created directly from the segmented CT data, has been fit with condylar cylinders. Their axis, and the epicondylar axis are shown. This image, taken from an Interative Anatomic Animation (IAAs), illustrates that the condylar and epicondylar axes are not identical. IAAs provide user interaction and encourage the user to manipulate the models in order gain a full understanding of the functional anatomy.

This image shows the Visible Human right femur analyzed and presented in the same manner as the CT data.

We encourage you to use the computer to explore the CT and anatomic data through the Explorable Virtual Human (EVH). Refer to the labels on the image, if you have questions regarding the use of the application. Click on the “Home” link to return to the beginning, and click on the “Tutorial” link at any time, to get simple interactive instruction on how to use the application.