Street Anatomy

Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge

Here it is again folks.

The 2008 NSF / AAAS Visualization Challenge

An arresting visualization will stop us in our tracks. A revealing visualization will show us more the longer we look at it. But a winning visualization will do all of that…and help us learn something new as well. Create a science or engineering visualization that addresses all three of these elements and you could be one of this year’s recipients of the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge awards.

The 2008 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Awards categories include: Photographs/Pictures, Illustrations/Drawings, Informational/Explanatory Graphics, Interactive Media, and Non-Interactive Media.

Winning entries will be published in a special section of the September 26, 2008 issue of the journal Science and Science Online and on NSF’s website. One winning entry will appear on the front cover of Science.

For more information, see: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis

Honoring the pharma creatives: Rx Club 2007 Award Winners

The annual RX Club Awards is considered to be the Oscars of pharmaceutical product advertising and promotion. It honors work in print, electronic media, and video in the service of healthcare. The RX club “provides an independent forum for the worldwide healthcare advertising community to exchange ideas, showcase their best creative projects, and bring forth innovative ideas in the expanding healthcare market place, keeping the industry on the cutting edge.”

Judging is based solely on creativity, not how much a brand sold or how much media it received. This makes it among one of the most prestigious awards an agency can receive. Take a look through the entire 2007 winner’s gallery.

Here is a selection of award winners that include some sort of medical illustration/animation:

AGENCY: Altum, part of CommonHealth
CLIENT: Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals
TITLE: Clearing the Marrow – educational brochure

AGENCY: iMed Studios
CLIENT: iMed Studios (self-promotionm)
CATEGORY: Promotional animation (watch the demo reel here)

AGENCY: IOMEDIA
CLIENT: GE Healthcare
TITLE: GE Hexvix Video

AGENCY: Abelson Taylor
CLIENT: Ivax Laboratories
TITLE: QVAR Sales Aid

AGENCY: Argosy Medical
CLIENT: Pfizer/Insyght
TITLE: Mechanism of Action of Chantix

AGENCY: Cherry
CLIENT: Sanofi Aventis
TITLE: Brain

AGENCY: DDB Health UK
CLIENT: Bristol Myers Squibb/ Sanofi Aventis
TITLE: Are your legs killing you?

AGENCY: DPM
CLIENT: CPE Communications
TITLE: ISCD Invitation

Hybrid’s award-winning nanomedicine animation

Congratulations to Hybrid Medical Animation for taking home four Aurora Awards this year. The Aurora Awards are an independent film and video competition for commercials, cable programming, documentaries, industrial, instructional and corporate videos.

Three of the four awards were for their Rexin-G Mechanism of Action animation for the Epeius Biotechnologies Corporation. Rexin-G is a targeted gene delivery system that seeks out and destroys cancer when other treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy fail to work. It is the world’s first tumor-targeted nanomedicine and has incredible potential.

The animation shows the “administration of Rexin-G, its distribution throughout the body via the circulatory system, and the mechanism by which the nanoparticles deliver their lethal payload to tumors.”

Hybrid Medical Animation is based in Minneapolis and they focus on creating 3D medical and scientific animations for the pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare, and biotechnology industries. Be sure and visit their site to see more incredible animations.

Click here to view the animation

Announcing the 2007 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge Winners

Photography: First Place (tie)
What Lies Behind Our Nose?
Kai-hung Fung

Scientific visuals should not be confined to the scientific community nor to a particular discipline. It’s the visuals that make science exciting and intriguing to the layperson. The goal of the National Science Foundation’s annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge is to celebrate the advances in imaging technologies and visualization techniques in depicting scientific knowledge. This years winners contain a gorgeous collection of images, from the airways behind our nose to visualizing the physiologic mechanism of tobacco dependence.

According to the NSF’s guidelines, “Entries should have scientific significance, freshness and originality, as well as have an aesthetically pleasing composition and drama. The spirit of the competition is for communicating science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes.”

All entries are judged according to the following criteria:

Visual impact
Effective communication
Freshness/Originality

And the categories for submission include:

Photography
Illustration
Interactive media
Animation

Sadly there were no winners under the illustration category. Looks like 3D is where it’s at in terms of visualization techniques. Be sure to check out the entire gallery of winners.

But here are all the rest of the medical visualization winners for your instant gratification.

How Does a Muscle Work?
Credit: Mark McGowan, Pat Murphy, David Goodsell, Leana Rosetti

Breast Cancer Virtual Anatomy
Credit: CCG Metamedia, Steve Rothman, Cathryn Tune, Nicola Landucci, Joseph Speiser, Samantha Belmont

Nicotine: The Physiologic Mechanism of Tobacco Dependence
Credit: Jane Hurd, Donna DeSmet, Jason Guerrero, Donald Tolentino

2006 IMI Awards

The Institute of Medical Illustrators (IMI) is the UK equivalent of the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) here in the U.S. The name is a little bit misleading because the IMI includes more clinical photography than actual illustration. Nonetheless, their annual IMI Awards showcase the best in clinical photography, graphics, illustration, animation, web-design, and much much more.

Here is a selection of a few of the award winning pieces. You can view the entire gallery here.