Week: 560.2 Guest: Dr. Muriel Ross, Nasa-Ames Research Center Topic: The Visible Human project Producer/Host: Steve Girard

NEMA: Seeing ourselves from the inside, out....coming up....

SPOT: NEMA...the National Emergency Medicine Association... fights our worst health enemies - heart disease, stroke, trauma.Call 800-332-6362.

NEMA: I had one of those model kits....the Visible body...how bout you...you know, where it was clear plastic, and you could take it apart and check out little plastic internal organs and bones. On the near horizon is the Visible Human project from the National Library of Medicine...in which male and female cadavers have been scanned and photographed digitally to create a three dimensional computer database with incredible possibilities...like the most realistic anatomy classes ever taught...or training runs in surgery for the utmost in practice and preparation. Dr. Muriel Ross of the Nasa-Ames research center works on software associated with the project....

ROSS: A surgeon could actually remove the soft tissues, go into the bones of skull, cut out a piece, shape it, move it to another site...reinsert it....and computationally restore the soft tissue, so that he or she could see the effect of the surgery before ever going into the surgical suite.

NEMA: To get the best effect for the project, the bodies were sliced into ultra thin layers, then computer photographed. If you want to check it out further, go to the National Library of Medicine Web site....www.nlm.nih.gov. I'm Steve Girard.