I’d like to introduce the official launch of Think Anatomy (thinkanatomy.com)—links to the best human anatomy study aids on the Internet.
I’ve taken links to the best anatomy resources on the Internet, categorized them, reviewed them, and put them all in one place—Think Anatomy. This has been a lengthy side project of mine and was inspired by my own experience taking gross human anatomy.
I found that reading an anatomy textbook, sitting in lecture, and dissecting in lab weren’t enough to really master anatomy. So I turned to the Internet to find resources like dissection videos, interactives, games, quizzes, etc., to supplement my study material. It took a lot of time to sift through the results and put together a list of valuable online anatomy resources. That’s where the inspiration to make Think Anatomy started. I wanted to make a site that anatomy students could use to find study aids without having to use a major search engine like Google. So after many many hours spent searching, reviewing, and categorizing anatomy sites, Think Anatomy is finally ready.
Go ahead and take a look through Think Anatomy. And if you’re an anatomy student I hope you can find the site useful. Feel free to rank and review any of the sites or submit your own favorite anatomy site—I know I haven’t covered every single anatomy site out there! The goal is to make Think Anatomy the number one portal to anatomy study aids on the Internet.
Here’s a sample of the type of sites you’ll find on Think Anatomy:
Anatomy Arcade—makes basic human anatomy come alive through awesome free Flash games and interactives. Visible Body—the most comprehensive human anatomy visualization tool available today. University of Michigan Dissection Videos—he best collection of free dissection videos on the web.
Finally! A way to study anatomy on-the-go without having to carry around cumbersome flashcards. Modality, a company dedicated to making educational content portable, has transformed one of the best anatomy education resources, Netter’s Anatomy Flashcards, into a portable interactive application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I’ll definitely be testing this out when it’s released in July.
Using outstanding anatomical illustrations from Netter’s hugely popular Atlas of Human Anatomy (4th Edition), Netter’s Anatomy allows you to carry the bestselling reference for human anatomy on your iPhone or iPod touch. Navigate through images with the flick of a finger, pinch to zoom, and tap to test your knowledge of muscles, bones, vessels, viscera and the joints. Use study mode to explore images at your own pace and quiz mode to test yourself on what you know.
The concise text reviews areas of origin, insertion, action, innervation, and anatomical relevance. The notes also include clinical correlations, where appropriate. A regional organization parallels Netter’s atlas as well as most of today’s anatomy courses.
Additional features include:
• Customize your study set by adding and removing images.
• Toggle pins on and off to explore detailed illustrations with or without annotation.
• All content is locally stored on your device for anytime, anywhere access.
• Instantly look up structures in Wikipedia (requires network connection).
Netter’s Anatomy contains over 300 fully-annotated images.
Watch an in depth explanation and demonstration of the anatomy application by S. Mark Williams, CEO and Founder of Modality.
Thieme (pronounced tee-ma) is one of the top scientific and medical publishers in the world. They’re known for their beautiful and elegant medical illustrations done primarily by illustrator Karl Wesker. It took a total of 8 years to complete the entire Thieme Atlas consisting of three textbooks and over 3,000 illustrations. Now those illustrations are available for free online in their new interactive study aid called Winking Skull.
You simply have to register for the site to start using it. By registering, you can compare your test scores to other users and even win “cool gifts.”
After registering and playing around with the Winking Skill for a bit, here’s what I found.
Some of the good features about the study aid include:
Ability to turn on and off labels as you study
Timed tests
Large illustrations (e.g. 900px x 1000px!)
Ability to print the illustrations with or without labels
This is a great option for teachers and students to take the illustrations with them wherever they go.
Some of the negative aspects include:
Few illustrations available in each body region
Hopefully they will keep adding illustrations to each region over time
Poorly designed home page
For such a well designed print atlas, I was a bit dissapointed with their web design. They have some distracting Flash on the home page and it’s difficult to recognize where to begin the interactive. (Compare to the clean design of the Visible Body).
Overall this is going to be another great study aid for anatomy. This growing trend in free online study aids is going to fill a great need in anatomy education today. Combine the Winking Skull illustrations with the 3D model in the Visible Body and you’ve got a good overall study aid to help you cram for those difficult anatomy exams.
Argosy Publishing has made a dream come true for students and teachers wanting an easy to use, high quality, 3D interactive anatomy atlas. And the best part of all? It’s absolutely free.
Other 3D atlases like A.D.A.M’s Interactive Anatomy ($695) and Primal Pictures’ Complete Online Human Anatomy Series ($660) don’t offer the flexibility of real time manipulation of their 3D models. The Visible Bodyallows you to seamlessly zoom in and out, rotate in any direction, and go directly into the body just by using your mouse. You can also add and delete systems, make systems transparent, and isolate specific structures. And to top it all off they created a very clean and simple user interface.
I had the opportunity to interview the CEO of Argosy Publishing, Andrew Bowditch, on the development, motivation behind, and future of the Visible Body.
How long did it take to complete the Visible Body?
This has been a five to six year project. We started by building models of various anatomical structures that we could then use to create animations for our clients. About two and a half years ago, we began to put the models all together and fill in the gaps. A huge challenge was to create the programming and user interface so that people could use the Visible Body as a whole and online. I wouldn’t say it is ‘complete’ — we have lots of ideas that we are working on to continually improve on it. But we felt that it is already a very useful tool, and that’s why we decided to release it publicly now.
Is there a team dedicated to completing the Visible Body or do your employees work on it alongside other projects?
We have a core team that is mostly dedicated to Visible, but occasionally some of them work on other things to help pay our bills. But it took an enormous amount of effort and dedication to get Visible Body to where it is now — definitely not a part time side project.
Currently the Visible Body can only be viewed on Internet Explorer on Windows, when can we expect to see the Visible Body across all platforms?
We are about to start working on a Mac version of the Visible Body. It is hard to say how long this will take, because it is going to require a whole new round of intensive programming, and we know from experience that it takes a lot of innovation, hard work, and trial and error to get such a complex program on the web. That being said, we want everybody to be able to use the Visible Body, and that includes everyone who can’t now due to platform incompatibility. We are dedicated to ultimately making this product platform-neutral.
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