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3D Virtual Body

  1. The Glasgow Digital Design Studio is teaming with the medical community to create the world’s most sophisticated 3D virtual body.
  2. They intend to use these for training of new surgeons.
  3. There have to be other real world training opportunities where laser scanning could be applied.

I am familiar with the work that Doug Pritchard is doing at the Glasgow School of Art Digital Design Studio in architectural visualization and historic preservation so when I saw the press release on creating a 3D body I sent out a quick email to see if he was branching out. Doug reports that it is Professor Paul Anderson, the Director of the DDS that is heading this project. He is not directly involved.

The DDS is collaborating with the medical community to create an interactive, digital simulation of the human body. The primary benefit will be in training surgeons to operate in human scale, virtual reality. This addresses two looming problems – a decrease in the number of cadavers being donated for research and limitations being imposed on the number of hours that young doctors are allowed to work.

Laser scanning will be used on both a male and female cadaver to create a new level of detail for a virtual body. A recent Danish research report found between 4 to 10 times better success rates for new surgeons who had been trained on simulators over a control group. This has tremendous implications for medical training, and I am sure if we begin to think about it many other hazardous training situations, such as nuclear power plant maintenance operations for instance.

It is the use of the power of laser scanning to solve real world 3D problems that we need to continue to focus on.

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