Computational Bioengineering: Current Trends and Applications

The release, some years ago, of the Visible Human (VH) dataset made it possible, for the first time, to access anatomical information without compromises. This produced a significant momentum in many areas. However, after some time, it became clear that, while the dissection approach used in the VH project ensured extreme quality, it also lacked many aspects that other forms of data contain. These include in vivo data collection, multi-subject, gender, sex, and age variations, lack of connection with functional information, no pathology, etc. To put it simply-he is just one, and he is dead. We do not know how he breathed, walked, swallowed, digested. and how the anatomy ad the relative functional aspects vary from subject to subject. The VH data totally lacks multiplicity and functionality. Many research projects have been carried out in Europe over the last few years, some with the support of the European Commission, to try to circumvent some of these limitations. A basic aspect possessed by the VH project, and lacking in all these other projects, is completeness. The VH project relates ONLY to the normal anatomy of one human subject, and provides ALL the anatomical information for that subject. The other projects had wider objectives, but lacked completeness. Some focused only on pathological data, others only on the lower limb, others again only on the modelling of functional aspects. Because of the lack of the necessary critical...