A reusable anatomically segmented digital mannequin for public health communication

Abstract

The ongoing development of world wide web technologies has facilitated a change in health communication, which has now become bi-directional and encompasses people with diverse backgrounds. To enable an even greater role for medical illustrations, a data set, BodyParts3D, has been generated and its data set can be used by anyone to create and exchange customised three-dimensional (3D) anatomical images. BP3D comprises more than 3000 3D object files created by segmenting a digital mannequin in accordance with anatomical naming conventions. This paper describes the methodologies and features used to generate an anatomically correct male mannequin.

Keywords:

• 3D model
• anatomical model
• anatomy
• health communication
• medical art and illustration
• medical education
• public health

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Kazuhiro Hamaoka at the Saitama School of Medicine for his critical review of hepatic segments and vasculatures. The authors are also very grateful to Professor Michael Corrin in the University of Toronto for his insightful comments and suggestions. Professor Yasukazu Nakamura at the National Institute of Genetics has been extremely tolerant and supportive, and his advice and comments have been a great help with writing this paper. They wish to thank all collaborators on this project for providing the environment and making the data available to the public.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Licence

The authors needed to monitor the spread of the data as a publicly funded project; therefore, the license was established as ‘Attribution–Sharealike’ in the Creative Commons licensing system (CC BY-SA) (http://creativecommons.org/). Consequently, as long as the source is cited as ‘data is derived from BodyParts3D of Database Centre for Life Science (DBCLS)’, anyone can freely modify, redistribute or sell work based on the mannequin data.