
Show HN: The Open Anatomy Project - mhalle
https://openanatomy.org/
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mhalle
Hello, I'm the principal investigator for the Open Anatomy Project.

The Open Anatomy Project is an effort to develop community-authored, high-
quality digital anatomy atlases that are free and open for any purpose.

We believe that anatomical information is so important for human health that
it should be free and easily accessible. Our lab, the Surgical Planning Lab at
Brigham and Women's Hospital, has developed a variety of detailed data sets
through grants funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH
also sponsored development of 3D Slicer (
[https://slicer.org](https://slicer.org) ), our open-source cross-platform
medical analysis and visualization platform.

Open Anatomy is a way for us to make that data useful for medical education
and further scientific discovery. We are structuring the atlas data format to
allow concepts from collaborative software development (such as diffing,
forking, and pull requests) to be used as part of open data development. As a
result, we believe we can build a community-based atlas portal based on the
same principles as Wikipedia and GitHub. The atlases are modular, so pieces
can be used for new applications such as 3D printing, VR simulators, or data
mining.

At the same time, we're working with medical colleagues throughout the world
to create new atlases and to use them where they are needed most. We have
collaborators in the Canary Islands, Senegal, Mozambique, and Mauritania who
are working with us to bring our atlases to their medical classrooms.

Our atlas viewer is very much a prototype and isn't mobile friendly yet, but
it shows off the atlases. We also have a tool called TAViewer (
[https://taviewer.openanatomy.org](https://taviewer.openanatomy.org) ) for
browsing medical information from Wikipedia and Wikidata. We want to integrate
it with the anatomy browser to allow atlases to be spatial indices for
anatomical information.

We are looking for collaborators and sponsors of all types to make this dream
of free and open anatomical information a reality.

