My friend who works for Vandy, showed me a software site that he’d found which was going to come in really handy for his work (he’s a media development guy for one of the ER departments at Vanderbilt Hospital). The software allows you to take images generated by things like CT scanners and make films with them (there’s a demo clip showing a guy looking at the stuff on his iPod).
The images are really high quality, and neat to stare at, but it gets to be more than a bit odd, when you realize that you’re not looking at CGI animation, or a medical skeleton, but at the innerworkings of someone’s body who is still alive. And it’s not like you’re watching surgery be performed, because, there’s no spurting blood, and you know (without seeing it) that the person’s skin is still intact.
I realize that the medical folks on the board will be like, “Meh, I see that every day.” but the rest of us, who don’t spend our days up to our elbows in other people’s insides are probably going to find it strange.
That’s cool!
My favourite ever bit of medical imaging was an Intravenous Urogram (IVU) on a pregnant patient. You could see her kidneys and bladder outlined by the contrast, and you could also see the tiny kidneys and bladder of her foetus perfectly outlined. It was cool.
Since most of the medical imaging I’ve seen is involved in non-invasive staging of tumours it is…less cool. In a sort of “See that tiny blob there? That’s metastaic spread from that big blob over there- I’d give this guy 6 months” way.
I’m not finding what you’re talking about in that link. It’s a pretty busy website. Can you direct me to the video?
The pictures and videos and such are here.
Wow!! I love that sort of stuff, but it’s kind of scary at the same time.
We went to the Ontario Science Center last week, where the Body Worlds exhibit is currently on. Stuff like what you see in those images, but right there in front of you. Fantastic!
here…
I’ve heard of that exhibit! My psychology teacher told my class about it. I’ll probably be going with a bunch of friends during the Christmas break. This is what we do for fun.
Heck, yeah. Go!
We took our 2 1/2 year-old. She loved it. Now she walks up to people in the grocery store and says “What’s inside a person? Muscles and bones and organs and ligaments”