Multimedia digital skeleton

A CD-ROM is under development for the teaching of skeletal anatomy. This forms part of the long-term development of teaching modules related to anatomy (including surgical and functional anatomy), for medical undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for specialist training. Development of the product, which is nearing completion, has been financed by the Learning Methods Branch of the Department of Employment, and by Primal Pictures Ltd. The product is the result of a collaboration between Primal Pictures Ltd and University College London. The CD-ROM will be coded to the White Book standard, and will contain around several hundred motion sequences, encoded in MPEG format, together with high resolution still pictures, sound and other information. The accompanying application runs under MS-Windows version 3.1 or later, and on any MPC-1 compliant PC fitted with an MPEG video decoder board. The data is assembled so as to allow the user to graphically navigate around the human skeleton and select particular bones or bone groups for more detailed examination. Navigation, icon selection and the rotation of individual bones or bone groups are controlled via the PC mouse, The bones have been photo-realistically rendered using anatomical surfaces derived from high resolution contiguous CT scans taken at 0.5 millimetre intervals. Full illumination, shadowing and perspective effects are included to convey the three-dimensional character of the bones. These may be viewed from a wide selection of angles, and muscle attachments may be viewed via screen icon selection. Selecting a bone or attachment by `clicking´ over it with the mouse produces a screen window with anatomical and clinical infonnation relating to the selected object. Spoken text is also an option. The inclusion of video sequences allows the viewer to see groups of individual bones rotating on the screen, enhancing the perception of shapes and positional relationships. The contents of the CD-ROM are based on experience gained during more than 12 years of research and development of a surgical simulation system by UCL, and the graphics expertise brought by Primal Pictures Ltd, who have also employed experienced university anatomy teachers to provide text and spoken information relating to the images