Conference to Showcase Advances in Cancer Screening, Surgical Planning, Educational Curriculums, and Innovative Clinical Procedures

(Bethesda, Md.)--According to Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), "Researchers from around the world are using the data from the visible man and woman to devise 3-D educational curriculums and innovative clinical procedures, including those with life-saving potential." Lindberg noted, "Next week, the public will see how the world's first 'computerized cadavers'-- referred to as the Visible Human Project-- are changing how anatomy is taught and medicine is practiced in the U.S. and throughout the world," at a conference on October 1 and 2, 1998 on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md.

Press are invited to see a demonstration of several new technologies based on the Visible Human Project at 11:30 a.m., Thursday, October 1, 1998 at the Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Funded by the NLM, a part of the National Institutes of Health, a team of researchers from the University of Colorado prepared digital images from two cadavers: a 39-year-old male and a 59-year-old female. Several electronic imaging techniques were used on the bodies, including electronic color photographs of thousands of razor-thin tissue cross-sections. The resulting datasets are enormous (altogether some 55 gigabytes) and open up a new world to researchers.

In November 1994 the Visible Human Project data were made available to the public on the Internet with just one requirement: users, who sign a licensing agreement, are required to keep NLM informed of how the information is being used. Some 1,000 agreements have been signed with scientists in 30 countries.

"The challenge facing us now is how to take this massive amount of complicated data and make it useful
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Contact: Robert Mehnert
publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov
301-496-6308
NIH/National Library of Medicine
22-Sep-1998