Digital help for new-age medicos

Now medical colleges don’t have to hunt for cadavers. A doctor at the Alapuzha Medical College has developed a digital anatomy model of the human body that can help medicos perform surgeries without any hindrance, reports Ramesh Babu.

Now medical colleges don’t have to hunt for cadavers. A doctor at the Alapuzha Medical College has developed a digital anatomy model of the human body that can help medicos perform surgeries without any hindrance.

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Called ‘3D Indiana’, it is an animated computer model that helps the user navigate through the virtual human body and study internal organs, their location, interconnection, size and texture. Each structure in the body is recreated in its true anatomical relation in Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr Jerome Kalister, also a graphics expert, has developed the 3-D model, assisted by a 15-member team after three years of research. The team is now in discussion with National Rural Health Mission director Dinesh Arora, who has asked for the initial model that can be introduced for trial in a medical college.

“Usually medicos see a cadaver in the first year of MBBS. In the second and third years they can only glance at one because the specimen would have been dismembered. So, medicos spend hours with diagrams and pictures instead of a cadaver. 3D Indiana will be a good anatomy aid for them,” said Dr Kalister, claiming that the Anatomical Society of India has already endorsed his model.

The team is currently programming the model on Windows to make it more user-friendly. The data alone would come to 1,500 GB and Dr Kalister has already spent more than Rs 60 lakh sculpting and developing the model. Once the Windows version is ready, the team can load it into piracy-proof laptops.

“US scientists spent 15 years using 450 people working on the Visible Human Body Project. But mine will be much cheaper,” said Dr Kalister.