Open Anatomy

A project to create a learning platform for medical and other students with anatomical learning needs. We create open data on human anatomy combined with public domain image information like sketches from old textbooks, 3D MRI scans, 3D artistic models, etc…

Following some scribbles of ideas I collected over the last years

general overview:

example data formats, sources, downloadable formats, basic database structure for rasterized images + pins

comparison of open data collections that are actually being used by a lot of people (Wikipedia, OSM and future Open Anatomy) and how that would influence the format and necessary steps for developing this platform:

a simplified Entity Relationship model of a basic database setup and possible use cases that the service should be able to handle or cater to

Since the platform is supposed to be created by the community (much like Wikipedia), the question is: How can anyone who has knowledge contribute to this platform? With Wikipedia, people spend varying amounts of time on contributing, from minutes to hours to days. Same goes for OpenStreetMaps. The format and editor needs to be intuitive enough to enable anyone to contribute even tiny amounts of time to correct small issues like spelling errors.

Overall, let’s review what parts should be editable by the majority of users and what parts need a lot of time to be editable:

• Editable by majority of users:
  • Texts
  • Labels
  • Tags
  • Position of Pins
  • Hierarchies
  • basically any actual anatomical info
• editable by “core team”:
  • data structure
    • relations between datasets.
    • are names stored as string or as reference to a localization file which contains the strings for each language respectively
  • backend
  • frontend / rendering code
  • other editing tools for changing the above

Software that could help the community create content:

• plugin for blender to set pins marking structures or add syntax-information to a mesh
• plugin for gimp to add markers to an image and then simply export to json with the click of a button
• plugin for Unreal Engine to load 3D content and use it or interactively edit syntax and/or pins in virtual reality
• webapp that works without installation in-browser to edit the pins / syntax on existing images and models

example wireframe / sketch of an elearning application:

example wireframe / sketch of edit mode of that same view for elearning: